【每日晨读金融时报】Trump asked lawmakers whether he should fire Powell at Fed

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。）

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