Jerome Powell

If anyone can stand up to Trump, it's the affable and decisive Fed chair, writes Matthew Bishop

- Matthew Bishop

Jackson Hole, with its stunning views of the Grand Teton mountains, is one of America's most beautiful escapes. For the past few days, it has been home to Jerome “Jay” Powell and the best friends an embattled Federal Reserve chairman can have his fellow central bankers.

Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, was there, as was Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, not least to reassure Powell that the central bankers union has his back as he battles to save the independence of the Fed from an increasingly aggressive president.

Enjoying Wyoming's fresh air and outdoor pursuits, such as whitewater rafting, while debating weighty economic topics with fellow central bankers sure beats donning a hard hat to give an angry Donald Trump a tour of refurbishment work in the Fed building, as Powell did the other week on live TV. Alleging cost overruns of billion of dollars, Trump was fishing for a reason to fire him “for cause”, the only grounds a president can use to dismiss a Fed chair, the 1935 Banking Act having legally protected the independence of the Federal Reserve system from White House interference.

The 72-year-old Fed chair stole the show and lived to fight another day with a carefully curated fact-check of Trump's wildly wrong numbers.

Since regaining the presidency, Trump, who chose Powell to be Fed chair early in his first term as president, only to turn on him soon after, has maintained a steady flow of abusive social media posts blaming him for failing to cut interest rates fast enough and suggesting that his beloved tariffs might be inflationary. “He is TOO LATE, and actually, TOO ANGRY, TOO STUPID, & TOO POLITICAL, to have the job of Fed chair,” blasted one typical recent example. Trump has also called him a “fool” and a “numbskull”.