Bessent Steps Up Criticism of Fed as Auditions for Chair Intensify

It is an unwritten rule that Treasury secretaries avoid interfering with the workings of the Federal Reserve. The Fed is an independent institution, one that most policymakers believe benefits the economy by being shielded from the winds of politics.

President Trump has made it clear that he does not subscribe to that view. He has openly mused about replacing Jerome H. Powell — whom he handpicked as the Fed’s chair during his first term — with someone who will do his bidding and lower interest rates, with little regard for the economic consequences.

As a result, auditioning for the job has begun in earnest, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is among several contenders even as he leads the search process, has shown a new willingness to deliver broadsides against the policies of the central bank.

Mr. Bessent has said he likes the Treasury role and will do whatever job Mr. Trump wants. But in recent weeks he has signaled that, if he led the Fed, he would push for the lower borrowing costs that Mr. Trump has been demanding.

In public appearances, he has echoed the president’s complaints that the Fed has been too slow to cut interest rates and has said its officials are misunderstanding the impact that tariffs will have on prices. Its policymakers have broadly argued that levies of the kind that Mr. Trump has put in place or threatened will raise consumer prices while slowing the country’s economic growth.

“I guess this tariff derangement syndrome happens even over at the Fed,” Mr. Bessent said on “The Ingraham Angle” on Fox News this month.