Fed up: inside Trump’s unprecedented bid to exert control over the US central bank

The US president and his allies spent 2025 attacking the Federal Reserve amid a rollercoaster year for the US economy

In the bowels of the US Federal Reserve this summer, two of the world’s most powerful men, sporting glistening white hard hats, stood before reporters looking like students forced to work together on a group project.

Allies of Donald Trump had spent weeks trying to manufacture a scandal around ongoing renovations of the central bank’s Washington headquarters and its costs. Now here was the US president, on a rare visit, examining the project for himself.