WASHINGTON — President Trump urged “numbskull” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell to lower interest rates Thursday — while confirming he plans to pick a new chair when Powell’s term expires next year.

Trump, who met with Powell on May 29 after publicly bashing him as too cautious, claimed that lowering benchmark rates by 2 percentage points could trim the federal deficit by $600 billion.

“We’re going to spend $600 billion a year — $600 billion — because of one numbskull that sits there [and says], ‘I don’t see enough reason to cut the rates’,” Trump said at an unrelated East Room bill-signing ceremony.

“We can’t get this guy to do it. And the Fake News is saying, ‘Oh, if you fired him it would be so bad. It would be so bad.’ I don’t know why it would be so bad, but I’m not going to fire him.”

Instead, Trump said his plan is to wait out Powell, 72, whose tenure expires in May 2026.

“We’ll go short-term for a year, let this guy get out of office and some guy will come in and cut it a couple of points and we’ll save ourselves $700 billion, $800 billion, maybe even $900 billion a year,” Trump said.

The president reportedly is considering his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, to replace Powell.

Trump picked Powell, a longtime federal appointee and former investment banker, near the start of his first term in 2017 at the urging of then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, but has since soured on him and nicknamed him “Mr. Too Late.”

The president griped Thursday that Powell remains firm on rates despite promising new data — including the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index, which on Wednesday assessed annual inflation at 2.4% in May, lower than economists expected.

The BLS’s Producer Price Index, released Thursday, found that corporate wholesale costs were up 2.6% over the past year, half of what economists had predicted. 

Federal Reserve officials, who aim to keep inflation around 2%, have cited the unpredictable impact of Trump’s tariffs — many of which have not taken full effect — as a reason for slowly reducing interest rates after inflation cooled significantly from its more than 9.1% peak in summer 2022.

“We want to get rid of inflation, and we have. But we’re going to be paying more for debt. And all he has to do is lower it. Europe has done 10 lowerings and we’ve done none,” Trump complained Thursday.

“You saw yesterday’s numbers — incredible, no inflation. Today just came out, same thing, no inflation.”

Trump said that he told Powell while hosting him last month at the White House that he should lower rates and raise them later if warranted.

“I said, ‘If you think there’s inflation, let’s find out, because I think we’re going to keep it down,'” Trump said.

“But let’s say there was inflation in a year from now, raise your rates. I don’t mind. Raise your rates, I’m all for it. I’ll be the one calling you. He will be too late for that too.”

In addition to driving up the federal deficit, elevated interest rates have slowed the real estate market and increased consumer borrowing costs.

The average 30-year mortgage rate remains at just under 6.9%, according to the St. Louis Fed — much higher than the 4.9% peak during Trump’s first term, reached in late 2018.

Average credit card interest rates, meanwhile, are 28.67%, according to Forbes Advisor — almost double the 14.6% average when Trump left office in 2021.

The central bank’s benchmark rate has remained between 4.25% and 4.5% since Trump reclaimed power in January. It was last lowered in December 2024 by 0.25 percentage points. 

The European Central Bank cut its benchmark rate to 2% on June 5, citing Eurozone inflation dipping below 2% in May.