Trump’s Fed Gamble Risks Backfiring on Markets

Amanda Agati, CIO: Asset Management at PNC Bank explains how the markets are digesting the latest Fed news and tech earnings.

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented and escalating attack on the Federal Reserve runs the risk of backfiring by hitting financial markets and the economy with higher long-term borrowing costs.

For weeks, he has lambasted Chair Jerome Powell for not slashing interest rates deeply to stimulate the economy and — as Trump sees it — lower the government’s debt bills.

He’s already nominated the head of his Council of Economic Advisers to the central bank’s board and is now seeking to oust Governor Lisa Cook, setting the stage for a legal battle over the institution’s political autonomy.

Yet for all the Fed’s power over short-term interest rates, it’s the 10-year Treasury yield — set in real-time by traders around the world — that largely determines what Americans pay for trillions of dollars of mortgages, business loans and other debts.

And even as Powell signals he’s ready to start easing monetary policy as soon as next month, those rates have been stubbornly high for other reasons: Tariffs are threatening to worsen still-elevated inflation; the budget deficit is poised to keep flooding the market with new Treasuries; and Trump’s tax cuts may even deliver a jolt of stimulus next year.

Throw in fears that a Fed loyal to the president could cut rates too far, too fast — jeopardizing the central bank’s inflation-fighting credibility in the process — and long-term rates could wind up even higher than they are now, squeezing the economy and potentially roiling other markets.

“The combination of weaker US payroll growth and the White House baiting of the Fed, both institutional and personal, is starting to create real issues for investors in US Treasuries,” said David Roberts, head of fixed income at Nedgroup Investments, who expects long-term rates to rise even if short-term ones fall. “Inflation is running way above the Fed’s target. Much cheaper money now would likely stoke a boom, a weaker US dollar, and materially higher inflation.”

The pressure on long-term interest rates isn’t unique to the US. They’ve been driven up in the UK, France and other countries by investors’ worries about the same combination of high government debt loads and increasingly unpredictable politics.

But the crosscurrents of Trump’s return to the White House have posed their own challenges.

During last year’s presidential campaign, when investors started betting on his victory, 10-year Treasury yields rose sharply even as the Fed started pulling its benchmark overnight rate back from a more than two-decade high. That’s because investors were anticipating that the Republican’s tax-cut and deregulation agenda would add fuel to what was, at the time, a surprisingly resilient economy.

Since Trump has taken office, though, the Fed has been on hold as his unpredictable trade war upends the economic outlook, spooks foreign investors and threatens to push up consumer prices. When Trump’s April tariff rollout unleashed one of the worst bond selloffs in recent decades, sending yields surging, Trump paused them, saying the markets were “getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”

He has since reimposed import levies and his trade policy has continued to remain in flux. At the same time, his tax-cut bill is set to add more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, which will add to the stockpile of debt unless his tariffs are kept in place by future presidents and wind up providing enough revenue to offset the cost.

“The US has to issue a tremendous amount of debt in order to fund its deficit,” said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Investment Management.

He said that overhang is adding to concerns about growth and inflation. “As a result, I would expect that long rates will remain higher and more volatile than the market expects.”

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