The Federal Reserve is expected to keep interest rates steady for the fifth time since December despite massive pressure from President Trump on Fed Chair Jerome Powell and a soaring economy.
This comes following Trump’s visit to the Federal Reserve Headquarters in Washington, DC, where he clashed with Jerome Powell on Fed renovation costs and, afterward, told reporters that they had a “very good meeting” and he expects Powell to suggest a rate cut.
“[Powell] said, ‘Congratulations, the country is doing really well,’ and I got that to mean that I think he’s going to start recommending lower rates,” Trump told reporters.
President Trump also hammered Jerome Powell in a statement this morning, highlighting new GDP numbers and the lack of inflation.
“’Too Late’ MUST NOW LOWER THE RATE. No Inflation! Let people buy, and refinance, their homes!” the President demanded.
The 12-member Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is meeting today and will release a policy statement at 2 pm ET.
The meeting remains shrouded in secrecy after a lawsuit from investment firm Azoria Capital, which argued that FOMC meetings are illegally closed to the public and sought to bar the FOMC from closing its next meeting, but was shot down by far-left District Court Judge Beryl Howell.
Howell reportedly went so far as to suggest that the lawsuit was meant as “a business strategy to build publicity or generate interest in a new investment fund.”
“If the FOMC’s July 29-30, 2025, meeting is allowed to proceed in secret, it will unlawfully deprive Azoria and the American public of timely access to deliberations that may reveal improper political motives behind the FOMC’s decisions,” the lawsuit read. It also outlines concerns that the Fed “is maintaining high interest rates to undermine President Donald J. Trump and his economic agenda.”
However, attorneys for the Federal Reserve argued that opening their meeting to the public would “irreparably harm the nation’s economy” and would “not be in the public interest.”
BREAKING: Jerome Powell’s lawyers just told a federal court that our demand to make next week’s Fed meeting public “would not be in the public interest.”
Seriously? How does transparency not serve the American public? What is the Federal Reserve hiding? https://t.co/YRz7fpYQzx pic.twitter.com/XG26xQLgxU
— James Fishback (@j_fishback) July 25, 2025
Azoria CEO James Fishback, in a statement on X on Monday, accused the Fed of attempting to “deny Americans their legal right to know what the Federal Reserve is doing” and declaring that “Azoria looks forward to continuing our case and fighting for transparency and accountability for all Americans.”
Per Reuters:
The Federal Reserve is expected to leave interest rates unchanged on Wednesday, six days after President Donald Trump again demanded that the U.S. central bank cut borrowing costs during a rare presidential visit to its headquarters in Washington.
The steep reduction in the benchmark interest rate that Trump wants – he has suggested cutting it from the current 4.25%-4.50% range to as low as 1% – is far out of line with an economy that has hewn largely to a steady-as-it-goes trajectory in the six weeks since the Fed’s last meeting. Such dramatic rate cuts would likely boost inflation in the view of many economists and are more in line with what the central bank would do to lift the economy out of recession.
Trump’s demands, which have coincided with an unrelenting campaign of attacks by the president and administration officials on Fed Chair Jerome Powell, have made little impression on policymakers. Even rate-cut advocates on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee favor a more traditional quarter-percentage-point cut at this week’s meeting, not the aggressive rate slashing embraced by the White House.
Even the modest rate cut appears to be a minority opinion, limited publicly so far to two Trump appointees to the Fed’s Board of Governors, Governor Christopher Waller and Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman. There is speculation that Waller and Bowman could issue dissents if the Fed on Wednesday holds the policy rate steady for the fifth time since December.
Powell is expected to hold a press conference at 2:30 pm ET after the FOMC policy statement is released.
Tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. ET: Chair Powell hosts live #FOMC press conference: https://t.co/fXt6ew8I9A pic.twitter.com/Y9MLePJ8MK
— Federal Reserve (@federalreserve) July 29, 2025
