(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he is not planning to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, after a Bloomberg report that the president is likely to do so soon sparked a drop in stocks and the dollar, and a rise in Treasury yields.
Trump is open to the idea of firing Powell, a source told Reuters on Wednesday before Trump said he wouldn’t, even as he unleashed a new barrage of criticism against the Fed chair for not cutting interest rates.
Trump polled some Republican lawmakers on firing Powell and received a positive response, the source told Reuters.
In response to a question about whether the White House has given any indication that the president intends to try to fire Powell, a Fed official pointed to Powell’s public statements that he intends to serve out his term.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto, David Morgan in Washington; editing by Rami Ayyub and Nick Zieminski)
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