Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell (left) meets with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office on May 31, 2022.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden on Thursday said he had “never once spoken” to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell while he was president.
But the pair, joined by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, met in the Oval Office on May 31, 2022 to discuss inflation, photos and videos from the meeting show.
The president made the inaccurate claim during remarks at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., the day after the Fed announced a decision to cut interest rates by 50 basis points.
Touting his own respect for the independence of the central bank, Biden said “By the way, I’ve never once spoken to the chairman of the Fed since I became president.”
Asked about the apparently inaccurate recollection by a reporter at Thursday’s White House press briefing, Council of Economic Advisors Chair Jared Bernstein said Biden had been referring only to discussions about interest rates.
“The president was saying that he has not spoken to Chair Powell about interest rates,” said Bernstein. “He did not pressure Powell and has never done so.”
But the error undercut Biden’s critique of Republican former President Donald Trump, who has threatened to challenge the independence of the Federal Reserve if he is elected to a second term.
“Unlike my predecessor, I respect the Federal Reserve’s independence as they pursue its mandate to bring inflation down. That independence has served the country well,” Biden said Thursday.
“It would also do enormous damage to our economy that independence was ever lost.”
Even in his 2022 Oval Office meeting with Powell, Biden stressed the importance of the Fed’s independence in addressing inflation.
“My plan to address inflation starts with a simple proposition: Respect the Fed. Respect the Fed’s independence,” Biden said at the time. “My job as president is not to not only nominate highly qualified individuals for that institution, but to give them the space they need to do their job.”
Trump, the Republican nominee for president, said in August that presidents should “have at least [a] say” about the Fed’s decisions on interest rates.
“Yeah, I feel that strongly,” Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago press conference on Aug. 8.
“I think that in my case, I made a lot of money, I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman.”
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that Trump advisors were putting together a plan that would inject Trump into the Fed’s interest rate decision-making process, if the Republican returns to the White House in January.
