Inside the Trump Administration’s Unprecedented Pressure Campaign on the Fed

Jerome Powell’s term as chair of the Federal Reserve ends Friday, May 15.

If President Donald Trump had had his way, Powell’s time at the helm of the country’s central bank would’ve come to a close far sooner.

“I’d love to fire his ass,” Trump said last year of the Fed chair he appointed during his first term. Under Powell’s leadership, the Fed has maintained its effort to combat continued inflation since Trump retook office — and has not enacted the interest rate cuts Trump has been seeking. Powell is “a real dummy” and “a stupid man,” the president has said, claiming that Powell “is costing our Country a fortune.”

The highly public clash between the president and the Fed over the institution’s independence and economic policy decisions is the subject of a new FRONTLINE documentary that premieres May 12 on PBS and online. From award-winning filmmakers James Jacoby and Anya Bourg, The President vs. the Fed chronicles the roots and ramifications of Trump’s unprecedented attempt to assert control over the most powerful institution in the U.S. economy.

“When you look at Trump’s economic agenda, this fight is actually the most consequential of his presidency,” journalist Christopher Leonard says in the film. “I think he knows that his economic and political success is dependent on what the Fed does. And so this attack for him is almost existential.”

"When you look at Trump’s economic agenda, this fight is actually the most consequential of his presidency.”

The above video drawn from The President vs. the Fed traces how Trump’s pressure campaign on Powell escalated following months of the president’s pushing for lower interest rates. According to laws protecting the Fed’s independence, presidents cannot fire Fed chairs over policy frustrations, only “for cause.” An alleged cause began to emerge when Trump allies questioned Powell at a routine Senate hearing in June 2025 and zeroed in on renovations to the Federal Reserve’s D.C. headquarters that were running over budget.

“It was not in and of itself inappropriate for Congress to ask the Fed how much it was spending on renovations,” Kathryn Judge, a professor at Columbia Law School, says in the video. “That being said, this was coming at a time when there were a lot of reasons to worry about the Federal Reserve’s independence.”

To Neel Kashkari, a current Fed official, it was clear what it was all about: identifying a cause that would allow the president to fire Powell.

“Do you really think that the line of questioning was sort of a pretext in order to get him out?” James Jacoby, the documentary’s correspondent, asks Kashkari in the video.

“Oh, of course,” responds Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “I mean, at this point, having now seen the pattern over and over again: they don’t like our monetary policy. And so, how do you change us from focusing on our dual mandate goals and focusing on data and analysis? You change the people who are doing the work.”

The following month, Trump made a surprise visit to the under-construction Fed building.

“This was just such a kind of shocking turn of events,” Colby Smith of The New York Times says in the video. “Presidents don’t visit the Fed. That is like not a common thing whatsoever.”

During the visit, Trump stood side by side with the man he had repeatedly personally insulted, arguing with him over the costs of the renovation project.

“It was very clear what the president was doing,” legendary investor Mohamed El-Erian says in the video. “He was embarrassing Chair Powell.”

“This was just such a kind of shocking turn of events.”

The pressure campaign didn’t end there. As The President vs. the Fed goes on to explore, several months after the visit, Powell announced that he was under criminal investigation by Trump’s Department of Justice over statements he’d made in the June hearing about the Fed’s renovation project.

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Powell said.

As the documentary reports, Congress designed the Fed to be insulated from political interference so it would be free to act in the long-term interest of the economy, including by making at-times unpopular monetary policy decisions. But Trump allies argue the Fed’s independence has shielded it from accountability for its mistakes, including its slow response to rampant inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that Trump has been within his rights to try to force Powell out.

“If Trump behaves like a king, Chair Powell behaves like an emperor,” Judy Shelton, a former Trump economic adviser, says in the documentary. “The Fed has gotten too big for its britches.”

The Fed’s independence from political influence must be preserved, others say.

“The role of central banks is to do unpopular things that elected politicians really can’t do,” Lael Brainard, a former member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, says in the documentary. “When the economy is going great and businesses are hiring and interest rates are low, that feels good to everybody. But everybody also hates high prices and they hate inflation. And it’s really the role of the Federal Reserve to start to slow the economy down when inflation’s getting too high. But if you’re an elected politician, you want that party to keep going on until you get reelected.”

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For the full story, watch The President vs. the Fed starting May 12, 2026, at 10/9c at pbs.org/frontline, on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel and on PBS stations (check local listings). The documentary will also be available on PBS Documentaries on Prime Video.The President vs. the Fed is a FRONTLINE production with Left/Right Docs. The director and correspondent is James Jacoby. The producers and writers are Anya Bourg and James Jacoby. The senior producer is Frank Koughan. The managing editor of FRONTLINE is Andrew Metz. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.

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Correction: This story initially stated that Neel Kashkari is a current member of the Fed’s Board of Governors. That was an error; he is a current Fed official, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.