By Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir
WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh on Wednesday said he is “honored” to lead the central bank’s policymakers and said politics played no role in their decision to skip a rate hike, rebutting at least indirectly President Donald Trump’s allegation that the Fed Board is partisan and against him.
“We just came out of a heck of a family fight” at the latest Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Warsh told reporters after the Fed ended a two-day meeting with a decision to leave the policy rate in the 3.75%-4.00%range.
“I think we came to the right policy decision for this moment, and I’m honored to be here and honored to be the chairman of this group,” he said.
“Politics played no role in the decision,” Warsh added. “I just spent two days with my colleagues upstairs. I didn’t hear an utterance about politics. I didn’t hear a reference to politics, elections, what’s happening in the next week.”
Elections to be held on November 3 will determine if Trump’s Republican Party retains its majorities in the House and Senate. Voters say affordability concerns, exemplified both by ongoing inflation as well as high borrowing costs, are top of mind as they head to the polls.
Warsh said he and his colleagues will get plenty of data in coming weeks that will leave them “better positioned” in December to determine whether to raise rates, and though the coming period will be “information-rich,” it will have “nothing to do” with politics.
Trump, during both his first and second terms in the White House, has excoriated the central bank for failing to deliver big rate cuts, and after the Fed’s decision in September to raise rates blamed Warsh’s colleagues as “hostile” and “partisan.”
Trump has not attacked Warsh himself, as he routinely did the previous Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and on Wednesday Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said both he and the president have “great confidence that Chair Warsh will steer the Fed between the right combination of growth and inflation.”
On Wednesday, Trump told reporters he had not spoken with Warsh about the central bank’s decision.
Still, Wednesday’s news conference demonstrated the minefield Warsh is traversing to remain in Trump’s good graces while also trying to assure financial markets that he will credibly fight still-elevated inflation.
The administration continues to press the case against rate hikes, and Bessent told CNBC on Wednesday that while “some” on the Fed Board feel letting inflation stay so high for so long shows “a lack of will, I don’t think it has to.”
Fed Governor Lisa Cook was one of two dissenters on Wednesday’s decision, preferring another quarter-point interest-rate hike instead of the hold that the Fed’s 10 other rate-setters agreed to.
Trump has been trying to fire Cook for more than a year, with a possible White House administrative proceeding set for November 5, and has also called for Powell to vacate his seat on the central bank’s Board of Governors. The two matters have high stakes for the Fed’s status as an independent policy-making body.
Asked if he would be involved in the White House proceedings against Cook, however, Warsh said, “not to my knowledge.”
Warsh was chosen by Trump to succeed Powell, who was also appointed by Trump to lead the Fed. Powell quickly fell afoul of the president for not following his advice on monetary policy.
As Warsh took over the Fed in late May, Trump said he was confident Warsh would lower rates and that he would not have selected him for the job if he did not feel that was the case.
Instead, persistent inflation and market doubts about Warsh’s independence led the new Fed chief to take a hardline position in pledging to defend the Fed’s 2% inflation target, with a rate hike in September and more considered likely.
So far, Trump has given Warsh the benefit of the doubt, blaming the rate rise on a group of governors appointed by former President Joe Biden that includes Cook.
(Reporting by Howard Schneider, Michael S. Derby and Ann Saphir; Editing by Paul Simao and Andrea Ricci )
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