WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he has no plans to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, but said he wants interest rates to be lower.
"I have no intention of firing him," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. "I would like to see him be a little more active in terms of his idea to lower interest rates," he added.
US stock futures all jumped over 1%. Mag 7 stocks also rallied; Tesla gaining 4%; Nvidia and Amazon up 3%; Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet up 2%.
Trump's statement was the first de-escalation after days of withering criticisms he has lobbed at Powell for not further cutting interest rates since Trump resumed office in January.
The broadsides were often accompanied by threatening remarks, such as last week's social media posting that Powell's termination as Fed chair "cannot come fast enough," that spooked financial markets that view the Fed's independence as underpinning its credibility on the global financial stage.
But while he seems to have set aside those threats for now, his criticisms of Fed rate policy remain just as pointed.
"We think that it's a perfect time to lower the rate, and we'd like to see our chairman be early or on time, as opposed to late," Trump said.