Trump Issues Stark Threat To Federal Reserve: “Lower The Rate Or I’ll Stop Trading With Countries With Which We Have A Deficit”
Trump threatened to cut off trade with deficit countries if the Fed refuses to slash rates, citing a Supreme Court ruling that actually went against him, while his own Fed chair spent the previous week signaling rates may need to…
President Donald Trump reacted to Friday’s stronger than expected August jobs report by publicly ordering the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and threatening to halt trade with every country the United States runs a goods deficit against if it does not. In a Truth Social post at 9:56 a.m. Eastern, he wrote: “LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT, which the U.S. Supreme Court, in its ridiculous and very costly Tariff decision, strongly acknowledged “the President” has an absolute right to do, according to The White House. IT’S BETTER THAN TARIFFS!”
The post opened with the jobs number. “Great jobs number just announced, breaking all estimates (except mine!) by double and triple,” Trump wrote, adding: “A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE.” He told the Fed board, under “its great new leader”, to “BE PATRIOTS for a change.”
Jobs Beat Was Real, But Narrower Than the Headline
The August payrolls report cleared expectations. CBS News reported the economy added 162,000 jobs, more than double economists’ forecasts, with the unemployment rate at 4.1% per CNBC. NBC News noted wage growth continues to lag inflation. Analysts flagged that a large share of the gain traced to seasonal adjustment effects concentrated in education and food service hiring, leaving the underlying pace less broad based than the headline number suggests.
Markets Read the Same Report the Opposite Way
Traders drew the opposite conclusion. Reuters reported the strong August jobs report sent Treasury yields higher, and the 10-year benchmark closed at 4.79% on September 2, the top of its one-year range. The dollar strengthened. CNBC reported the Dow fell after the release. A hotter labor market normally lowers the odds of near-term cuts. The Fed’s target range upper bound stands at 3.75%, and core PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, is at a one-year high of 130.66.
Trump’s Own Fed Chair Just Signaled the Opposite
The “great new leader” Trump addressed is his own pick. CNBC identifies the sitting Fed chair as Kevin Warsh, confirmed earlier this year. One week before Friday’s post, per CNBC, Kevin Warsh told the Jackson Hole symposium on August 28 the Fed had “work to do” if above-target inflation persists, remarks widely read as opening the door to rate increases rather than cuts. NPR reported the same day that Warsh’s warning sparked market bets that rate hikes are coming.
Supreme Court Ruling Undercuts the Trade Cutoff Claim
Trump’s legal claim overstates the ruling he cites. The Supreme Court of the United States held that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs, because tariffs are a taxing power the Constitution reserves to Congress. The opinion listed several narrower statutes that remain potentially available but did not rule on the scope of any of them. The New York Times reported Trump pivoted to Section 122 tariffs within hours of the ruling.
Thursday’s Version of the Argument
On September 3, Trump made a related argument that cutting off trade with countries the U.S. buys heavily from would amount to making money, floating a tariff on Canadian vehicles. Economists pointed out that Americans depend on the imported goods involved and that tariff costs pass through to U.S. consumers. The July goods and services deficit widened to $88.6 billion, the largest in the available series.
What remains on the record is a sweeping ultimatum aimed at a chairman the president himself installed who has signaled the opposite direction, resting on a Supreme Court ruling that was a defeat on its central holding, delivered on a day markets treated the same jobs number as a reason not to cut.
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AJ has spent the past 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
