The President's News Conference at the Federal Reserve System Headquarters

[The American Presidency Project does not categorize this event as a "News Conference" regardless of the title published in the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents. This event's setting, style, and other characteristics are not consistent with traditional "news conferences" and is similar to extemporaneous instances in which the president entertains questions from reporters. See our explanatory note at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/presidential-news-conferences]

The President. Well, thank you very much, everybody. And it feels very good, actually, to be back on a construction site.

You know, if you remember, not so long ago, we rebuilt the Old Post Office into the Trump Hotel, and we sold it to Waldorf Astoria. And it was a great success, and we had great luck with the building. We did a good job. We built it quickly and relatively inexpensively and for about $200 million. And that was a big hotel—big, big project.

But we looked around—and Tim Scott is here someplace.

Senator Timothy E. Scott. Yes, sir.

The President. Tim, come on up. Just—you saw what we saw.

Sen. Scott. Yes.

The President. And the big thing is to get it done. They have to get it done. They have to get it finished. And very importantly, we have to get interest rates lowered in our country. Our country is the hottest in the world right now.

But the one section—people are pretty much unable to buy housing——

Sen. Scott. Yes.

The President. ——because the interest rates are too high. We have no inflation. We have a lot of cash coming in. The tariffs have been unbelievable. Now——

Sen. Scott. Thanks to your leadership.

The President. ——people that didn't even believe in tariffs are saying, "What a great move that was."

We have hundreds of billions of dollars coming in. Japan, just on one deal, is paying us $550 billion, and they opened up their economy. It's incredible, the deal. And they're happy. We're happy. Everybody's happy. But we should have the lowest interest rate of any country, and we don't.

We should have. Every point is worth $365 billion. So we want to get the rates down, but we also want to get the Fed building finished. So I met with the contractors. We toured it with the Chairman. And we had a very good tour, and we'll talk to you about it sometime. But Tim and I, we sort of understand what happened.

Sen. Scott. Yes. Too expensive. Bottom line is this, that Americans deserve to become first-time home buyers. President Trump has created the best economy in the world. The one thing that would make it better is lower interest rates.

Full employment is even more possible. Wages rise faster as interest rates come down when your employment is at 4.1 percent, because of your leadership. We have revenues coming in at record-breaking—maybe last month, even more revenue coming in——

The President. Yes

Sen. Scott. ——than bills going out, which is remarkable.

The President. They found $25-, $26 billion. They said, "Where did that come from?" Nobody—I think that's been many, many decades since that happened, but——

Sen. Scott. I can't remember that.

The President. They found $26 billion last month. And they said, "Where did that come from?" I said, "Why don't you try the tariffs?" And it was true. We took in—we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. And our country is doing great, and we have no inflation, and the numbers, the job—everything is good.

The one thing we have to do is get housing prices down and the interest rates down so people can buy the house. Because they're all making money, but they can't get the interest rate down. We have to.

Sen. Scott. Amen.

The President. All right. And he's been my friend for a long time.

Renovation Work at the Federal Reserve/Trade Negotiations

Q. Mr. President, you've been on a number of construction sites. Did you see mismanagement going on or funds that aren't——

The President. Well, I see a very luxurious situation taking place. Let's put it that way. And I was given a very nice tour by the head of construction. And you know, look—if you look over here, they're trying to open up the basement.

When you open up a basement—first of all, it's the worst space. Always, a basement is the worst space in a building. And it's also the most expensive space to build. And especially here, because you have a water line. You know, you—they're going down into the water, so they have to build a reverse—what's called a reverse bathtub. The water has to be kept out.

It's very expensive construction. So it would have been good if they didn't build it. Would have been good if they didn't do certain other things. If you look at the kind of protection in the hall—have you been able to get in the hall? You saw the protection of plywood—I mean, that was a lot of money just to protect it for a period of time.

I would have done it very gingerly and easily, and not have spent, you know, millions of dollars on protection. And there are things that could have been different.

[At this point, several reporters began asking questions at once.]

Look, there's always Monday-morning quarterbacks. I don't want to be that. I want to help them get it finished. It's been going on for years, and I want to help them get it finished. And what we really want to do—and I think I can speak for Tim, and I think I can speak for the entire Senate; we can speak for everybody, frankly—is we want to see interest rates come down.

Our country is booming. And the interest rates is a final little notch. And if you look at Europe, they've lowered 11 times—11 times, in a short period of time. We've lowered zero.

And we—you know, they are competition. Although, we're in the process of probably making a very good deal with them too. They're—they want to make a deal very badly—very badly. So we're making a deal.

We just completed our deal with Indonesia. We just completed our deal with the Philippines. We're making unbelievable deals, and the money is pouring in. We want to get interest rates down.

Interest Rates

Q. But on interest rates, at some point, does the level of interest rates now slow economic growth?

The President. Yes. It never helps it, if it's high.

Q. At what point——

The President. It never helps it. Well, it's already—as good as we're doing, think of how well we'd be doing. We'd be like a rocket ship. As good as we're doing, we'd do better if we had lower interest rates. And we should. We're prime.

Don't forget, without us, the whole world collapses. So we should have the lowest interest rate, because, you know, you can talk about Switzerland; you can talk about wonderful countries: no debt, no—but without us, everything collapses. We should have the lowest interest rate.

And if you took it down 3 points—not a little bit, but 3 points—if you got us down to 1, we would save more than a trillion dollars, basically, with just a paper transfer. You wouldn't be cutting costs of anything. You wouldn't be building anything. Just a move of the hand, saying, "We're going to lower interest rates," you would save a trillion dollars a year.

Sen. Scott. Wow.

The President. And there's nothing you can do to save that kind of money.

Q. Did the Fed Chairman——

Q. Mr. President——

The President. So, hope——

Q. Did the Fed Chairman say why he's not lowering interest rates?

The President. Well, we had a little talk about it, and I thought it was a very productive talk. He'll be able to tell you at his next meeting, but I will say that he did say the country is doing really well.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

And the country is really doing well.

Sen. Scott. Yes.

Q. Mr. President——

Q. Mr. President, what was the final——

The President. Yes, please. Go ahead.

Chairman of the Federal Reserve System Board of Governors Jerome H. Powell

Q. How would you describe your talk with him? Would you say that the energy was tense? The—you know, did you come to any agreements with him?

The President. No, I didn't think it was tense. No, I thought we had a good meeting. I really——

Sen. Scott. Very professional.

The President. No, there was no tension. There was no tension.

I think he had more tension with my great Senator to the right. [Laughter] He's a pretty tough cookie. He was—you might say——

Sen. Scott. Well, he's—bottom line is, we had an honest, candid conversation about some of the overruns at this building. We had it in my Banking Committee, and he said we were wrong. And turns out, we were right.

Thank God, President Trump and his team took enough time to dig into some of the details, and the details are clear. We need to get this project done. We would like to keep it where it is or a little lower. But, at the end of the day, the point is that instead of talking about interest rates, instead of talking about first-time home buyers, instead of talking about the heat in our economy—that's a good thing—we're talking about an overrun on the Federal Reserve building, as opposed to the Federal Reserve objective of lowering and keeping our economy full.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

The President. You know, as an example, they built parking spots under a building next door.

Sen. Scott. Really expensive.

The President. That's very expensive. When you're starting to build parking lots—underground parking lots, that's a very expensive thing. A lot of people I know, they park their car, and they walk a block or two blocks or something.

Sen. Scott. My staff does.

The President. But it is a very expensive thing. But that is what it is, and that's okay.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Renovation Work at the Federal Reserve

Q. Is this project a fireable offense for——

The President. What?

Q. Is this project a fireable offense for Jerome Powell?

The President. Look, I would love to see it completed. I don't want to put that in this category. It's a very complex thing that could have been made simple.

I built a great hotel, and the great hotel that everybody in this group knows very well—it's called the Old Post Office, and it's a much bigger project than this. And I spent $200 million building it. And it was down—it was taken down to the steel—for the most part, taken down. You know, you've seen it go up.

And I built it quickly, and I built it for $200 million, a much bigger job than this. Spent $200 million. That's got marble bathrooms, the top fixtures, the best of everything, all brandnew. So, you know, this is a very expensive job. I don't know, it got out of control. And that happens. That happens.

Q. Are you——

The President. It's a shame.

Tariffs/Japan-U.S. Trade

Q. Are you negotiating on auto tariffs?

Q. Mr. President, what was the—what was the final straw——

Q. Your—auto tariffs, are——

Q. What was—the final straw——

The President. No, I'm not negotiating on auto tariffs.

Q. So does the EU—looking at 15 percent, like Japan——

The President. Well, it depends.

Q. ——for autos coming in?

The President. Japan—what Japan did is, they brought down their tariffs. They gave us three —$550 billion because they didn't want to pay 20—they were 28 percent. And they gave us $550 billion up front—100 percent, 500. We get 90; they get 10. Ninety percent; they get 10.

And there's no payment—it's not a loan or anything. It's a—signing bonus, I call it.

But they gave us $550 billion and took down the tariffs a little bit, and then they agreed to open their economy to everybody. This was not easy. This took—you know, a lot of people walked out of rooms and things. Sometimes they walked out of rooms, went back to Japan.

Sen. Scott. That's right.

The President. I said, "Where are they?" "They went back to Japan." And then they called, and they said, "Can we make a deal?" They came back. A couple of times, this happened.

This was—as you know, it was over a period of months. And ultimately, they agreed to open their economy. Now, the opening of the economy is worth more than $550 billion, the payment that they made. It's worth more.

So, between that and the payment, we reduced it down to 15 percent, but they were at about 28 percent, and then they bought it down, basically.

Q. But could other countries buy it down, then?

The President. Yes, I would let other countries buy it down. Sure.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Interest Rates

Q. Mr. President, do you feel better or worse about your relationship with the Fed Chairman after this meeting?

The President. I feel good about it. I mean, look, I have one dispute, and the dispute is—there could be some things with money and, you know, where it comes from, how it's come from, how it's printed, where it's printed—all of the standard things with the Fed. But I just want to see one thing happen. Very simple. Interest rates have to come down.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

If the interest rates don't come down, we're knocking it out of the park with high interest rates.

Q. If he's hurting the country——

The President. If interest rates come down, then that final little element kicks, and that's housing. And the sad part is that people—wonderful, young people, young couples starting off, they can't get a mortgage because the rates are too high. They're——

Sen. Scott. First-time house buyers.

The President. Tim knows that better than anybody, I think.

Q. Mr. President, if the rates are hurting families in the country, why let that keep going for another 8 months? Why not just fire the Chairman now?

The President. Because to do that is a big move, and I just don't think it's necessary. And I believe that he's going to do the right thing.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

I believe that the Chairman is going to do the right thing. I mean, it may be a little too late, as the expression goes, but I believe he's going to do the right thing.

The fact is, it's so big, what's taking place in America, where the King of Saudi Arabia says, "You have the hottest country anywhere in the world, and I thought you were dead 1 year ago." He thought we were dead.

I just left NATO, as you know. They're agreeing to pay 5 percent. We're not paying anything. We send them the equipment—they pay for a hundred percent of everything now for the war, Ukraine. But I just left NATO, and every one of those leaders said—every country, they said—and very smart countries, very successful—you know, very——

Sen. Scott. Successful.

The President. ——successful countries, frankly. And every one of them said, "You have the hottest country in the world."

We did that over a period of a year. Less than a year, I mean, if you think. I mean, less than—they say, "A year ago, we were dead." And today—so I'm here 6 months, and we did it over—and we had the help of——

Sen. Scott. Amazing.

The President. ——men like this and people like standing right behind me. They're great—Sen. Scott. Leadership matters.

The President. They're great professionals. They really are. They're great professionals.

And in a short period of time, we made it the hottest country of the world. With all of that being said——

Sen. Scott. Interest rates.

The President. ——we'd like to see—we can always do better, and we can do better if interest rates come down.

Sen. Scott. That's right.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

The President. Good job you do. You do a nice job. I watch you a lot.

Q. Thank you. I appreciate that, Mr. President.

Federal Reserve System

Do you have a name in mind to replace the Chairman, or are you——

The President. I do.

Q. Are you—one person?

The President. Two people.

Q. Two people.

The President. Maybe three.

Q. Any clues?

The President. I'd pick him, but I think he's not leaving the Senate.

Sen. Scott. No, sir, I'm not.

The President. I'd pick Tim.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Thank you.

Chairman of the Federal Reserve System Board of Governors Jerome H. Powell

Q. Mr. President, was this visit meant to put pressure on Jerome Powell to resign?

The President. No, there's no pressure. No. We want to have—you know, his term comes up soon. I think he's going to do the right thing. Everybody knows what the right thing is.

Even people that believed in, you know, the higher rates, they're all——

Sen. Scott. Changing their minds.

The President. ——on board. They all want to see the interest rates come down. It's very important.

Q. Could you change his mind?

Possible Leadership Change at the Federal Reserve

Q. Mr. President, if he doesn't do the right thing and cut interest rates, as you said, would you then consider firing him?

The President. I don't think we're going to that. I don't——

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Intelligence Community Assessment of Past Russian Election Interference

Q. Would you support a Special Counsel——

The President. I don't think so.

Q. ——to investigate the newly declassified documents by Gabbard?

The President. Yes, that's a terrible thing. The—I have great respect for Tulsi. And the documents they found on President Obama——

Sen. Scott. I heard that.

The President. Frankly, it was an Obama thing. But it was the people that worked under him also, working with him. And no, it's a very, very serious thing.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, everybody.