Brian Chappatta, Columnist

In Trump Versus Obama, Interest Rates Are a Stalemate

Overall borrowing costs haven’t been much different under the two presidents.

September 13, 2019 at 9:00 AM UTC

Brian Chappatta is managing editor of Bloomberg News' leveraged finance and distressed debt teams. He was previously managing editor and team leader of its wealth group. Before that he was a Bloomberg Opinion markets and finance columnist and a bonds reporter for Bloomberg News.

Interest rates are a game that Trump shouldn’t be playing.
Photographer: Salah Malkawi/Getty Images

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President Donald Trump has a select few things on his mind if his Twitter feed is any indication. One of them apparently is what he sees as unfairly high borrowing costs in the $16 trillion U.S. Treasury market.

“INTEREST COST COULD BE BROUGHT WAY DOWN,” he tweeted on Wednesday, adding that “the USA should always be paying the the lowest rate.” On Thursday, after the European Central Bank cut its benchmark rate further below zero, he lamented that some countries in the region “get paid to borrow money, while we are paying interest!” All the while, “the Fed sits, and sits, and sits.”