Fed’s Kashkari Said What Needed to Be Said

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has stood firm in the face of White House interference in monetary policy. When his term ends in May, the institution will need other leaders to step up and continue to counter the Trump administration’s blatant attempts to undermine the independence of the world’s most important central bank — including a gratuitous new broadside against Fed researchers by Trump advisor Kevin Hassett. Fortunately, that already appears to be happening.

The latest dust-up began on Wednesday when Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said on CNBC that researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York should be “disciplined” for a paper that found US consumers and businesses were overwhelmingly shouldering the burden of Trump’s tariffs. Leaving aside the fact that the research was statistically sound and consistent with similar findings by other top economists, the comment was jarring in its call to punish researchers for simply doing their jobs.