Donald Trump says interest rates are so high people 'can't do anything' - and vows to beat inflation so borrowing costs can be cut

• Donald Trump attacked the high interest-rate regime currently in place in the US.
• "Interest rates are too high – people can't buy homes, they can't do anything," he said Sunday.
• The ex-president also pledged to carry on fighting inflation, which has cooled off in recent months.

US interest rates have climbed so high people "can't do anything" anymore, according to Donald Trump.

The former president pledged to bring inflation down if he wins the 2024 election, so borrowing costs can be lowered.

"Right now, interest rates are too high – people can't buy homes, they can't do anything," Trump told NBC's "Meet the Press". "They can't borrow money – the banks don't have the monies."

"It depends – it depends where inflation is, but I would get inflation down," he added, in response to a question about whether he'd direct the Federal Reserve to loosen monetary policy.

The central bank jacked up its benchmark lending rate from near-zero to around 5.5% between March 2022 and July 2023.

The US economy has held firm in the face of that aggressive tightening campaign. Second-quarter GDP growth came in at a better-than-expected 2.4%, the unemployment rate has held steady at under 4%, and inflation has cooled significantly since mid-2022.

Several top Wall Street firms have shelved their recession forecasts after that barrage of positive data – but Trump isn't so sure that the US will be able to avoid an economic slump.

"They say that, and then you end up in a depression, they say that you're going to do great, then you end up bad and the opposite," he told NBC. "Most of them don't know what they're doing – it's a touch, it's a feel."

"I've predicted a lot of markets – I've predicted a lot of things, frankly. They say Trump was right about everything."

"Things are not going very well right now for the consumer," Trump added. "Bacon is up five times, food is up horribly, worse than energy… energy is starting to go up at a level that we haven't seen in a long time."

Trump often took to Twitter to criticize the Fed while he was president, calling policymakers "boneheads" and comparing chair Jerome Powell to "a powerful golfer who can't putt".

On Sunday, he hinted that he might consider replacing Powell if he wins re-election next year – and claimed his tense relationship with the US's top central banker had helped to fuel economic growth.

"I guess [Powell] would have two years left or something like that, so we'll see," Trump said.

"You know the word jawboning? I did a lot of jawboning against him, and he ultimately lowered interest rates," Trump added. "We had lower interest rates. We had the best housing market ever. We had people buying homes."