Trump hits ECB president for 'unfairly' competing against the US
President Trump ripped the European Central Bank on Tuesday for pushing down the value of the euro, hours after its president Mario Draghi hinted at the possibility of additional fiscal stimulus in Europe.
“Mario Draghi just announced more stimulus could come, which immediately dropped the Euro against the Dollar, making it unfairly easier for them to compete against the USA,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “They have been getting away with this for years, along with China and others.”
Earlier in the day, Draghi said the ECB was ready to cut interest rates, if the economy needed it. Draghi said during a speech in Portugal that “further cuts in policy rates...remain part of our tools.”
"In the absence of improvement, such that the sustained return of inflation to our aim is threatened, additional stimulus will be required,” he said.
Trump's and Draghi’s comments come at the start of the two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting in the U.S. Policymakers at the U.S. central bank are widely expected to keep the benchmark federal funds rates steady, while paving the way for a cut in July. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will hold a news conference on Wednesday, shortly after the release of a policy statement.
Trump has frequently criticized the Fed for hurting economic growth in the U.S. As recently as Friday, he claimed during an interview with ABC News that the stock market would be “10,000 points higher” if policymakers had not raised interest rates four times in 2018.
Most recently, Powell suggested the Fed was prepared to respond to economic impacts from muted inflation and the U.S.-China trade war.
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“We do not know how or when these issues will be resolved. We are closely monitoring the implications of these developments for the U.S. economic outlook and, as always, we will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion, with a strong labor market and inflation near our symmetric 2 percent objective,” he said at the beginning of June.