Description

Don­ald Trump asked law­makers whether he should fire Fed­eral Reserve chair Jay Pow­ell in a move that fuelled a fresh bout of con­cerns over the cent­ral bank’s inde­pend­ence and hit the dol­lar.

A White House offi­cial yes­ter­day said Trump asked Repub­lican mem­bers of Con­gress dur­ing an Oval Office meet­ing late the pre­vi­ous day whether he should remove Pow­ell. Law­makers sup­por­ted the idea, the offi­cial said.

Trump later yes­ter­day pushed back at the pro­spect that he would immin­ently sack Pow­ell, who the pres­id­ent has relent­lessly cri­ti­cised in recent weeks for declin­ing to cut interest rates.

“We’re not plan­ning on doing any­thing,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I don’t rule out any­thing, but I think it’s highly unlikely, unless he has to leave for fraud, and it’s pos­sible there’s fraud.”

Trump said “almost every one” of the law­makers he met on Tues­day sig­nalled he should remove the Fed chair before his four-year term ended in May 2026.

The dol­lar swung in volat­ile trad­ing, with an index track­ing the cur­rency against its peers slid­ing as much as 0.9 per cent before trim­ming its losses to roughly 0.3 per cent.

The odds on pre­dic­tion mar­ket Poly­mar­ket that Trump would fire Pow­ell this year shot up to as high as 40 per cent, before reced­ing to 20 per cent as the pres­id­ent appeared to back­track.

Spec­u­la­tion that Trump might remove Pow­ell reached a fever pitch after Anna Paulina Luna, a Repub­lican con­gress­wo­man from Flor­ida, pos­ted on X on Tues­day night that she was “hear­ing” that the Fed chair would be fired, and his sack­ing would be “immin­ent”. Luna was among 11 House Repub­lic­ans who met Trump in the Oval Office late on Tues­day as the pres­id­ent tried to win over their sup­port for legis­la­tion that would cre­ate a reg­u­lat­ory frame­work for stable­coin issuers.

Trump has insisted interest rates should be as much as 3 per­cent­age points lower than their cur­rent levels of 4.25 per cent to 4.5 per cent, say­ing lower bor­row­ing costs would help reduce the pub­lic debt bur­den of his “big, beau­ti­ful” budget bill.

Pow­ell and many other mem­bers of the Fed’s policy-set­ting board are wor­ried Trump’s tar­iffs could increase infla­tion. A report on Tues­day poin­ted to grow­ing pres­sures on con­sumer prices.

1.a fresh bout of concerns

词性：短语
释义：新一轮担忧，指人们对某一问题（如经济、疾病、战争等）重新产生的紧张或担心情绪。

bout 通常指“（疾病、情绪等的）一阵、一次”，此处引申为“又一轮”或“再度爆发”。
例句：A fresh bout of concerns about inflation rattled global markets.
（对通胀的新一轮担忧让全球市场感到不安。）

2.push back at the prospect that...

词性：动词短语
释义：对……的可能性表示反对/抵制，意思是不同意某种预测、趋势或观点。

push back 在此指“反击、反驳”，prospect 表示“可能发生的事情”。
例句：Economists pushed back at the prospect that the economy was heading into recession.
（经济学家对“经济将陷入衰退”的可能性表示质疑。）

3.relentlessly

词性：副词
释义：不懈地，持续不断地，毫不留情地，常用来形容某种行动或趋势的持续性和强度。
例句：The company has been expanding relentlessly across Asia.
（这家公司在亚洲持续扩张，势头不减。）

4.imminent

词性：形容词
释义：即将发生的，迫在眉睫的，用来描述某件事（通常是负面或令人担忧的）很快就会发生。
例句：Analysts warned that a market correction could be imminent.
（分析师警告说，市场调整可能即将到来。）