(Bloomberg) -- Christine Lagarde challenged two of Donald Trump’s key gripes by defending monetary-policy makers and the importance of global trade.
The European Central Bank chief suggested the former US president should visit Frankfurt to see just how hard the job is of her US counterpart, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whom Trump has repeatedly criticized.
Questioned by Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua on policymakers’ vulnerability to political criticism — and the presidential contender’s view that setting interest rates is easy — she insisted that it really isn’t.
“He should come and visit us,” she said on Tuesday in Washington. “I have thousands of hard working people — economists, jurists, computer scientists — and I can assure you that they work super hard every day, not just once a month.”
Lagarde is in Washington for the International Monetary Fund meetings just two weeks before the closely-fought US election campaign reaches a climax with the national vote on Nov. 5.
Trump, the Republican candidate, when asked by Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait this month about whether he would seek to remove Powell, dodged the question and observed that the Fed chair has “the greatest job in government. You show up to the office once a month and you say, ‘let’s say flip a coin’ and everybody talks about you like you’re a god.”
Lagarde said that her own staff are exemplary in supporting policymakers in a very tough task.
“They are extremely conscientious and determined to really do the best job they can to deliver the right monetary policy and secure what is our common good, which is our currency,” Lagarde said. “We defend the euro, and we fight for the euro, just as the Fed defends the dollar, I’m sure — I don’t want to speak for Jay Powell, but I’m sure that’s how he sees his job.”
Lagarde, who started her career in politics as France’s trade minister in 2005, also pushed back against Trump’s preference for tariffs — described in the Micklethwait interview as his favorite word.
“Fair trade is a key boost for growth, for employment, for innovation, for productivity,” she said. “I would say that it’s something that we should not throw away because in any period of time where this country, the United States, has thrived were periods of trade, not periods of ‘I’m going to retire behind my boundaries and play at home.’ No.”
The Republican candidate has pledged to impose goods tariffs of 60% on China and as much as 20% on everyone else. Such measures, if implemented, would inflict the biggest trade shock since the Smoot-Hawley Act that deepened the Great Depression of the 1930s, dwarfing the impact of his actions when in office for four years starting in 2017.
--With assistance from Alexander Weber, Bastian Benrath-Wright, Jana Randow, Kate Davidson, Ezra Fieser, Jorgelina do Rosario, Todd Gillespie, Laura Noonan, Toru Fujioka, Fran Wang, Jenni Marsh, Colum Murphy, Philip Aldrick, William Horobin, Kamil Kowalcze, Manuela Tobias, Mirette Magdy and Ramsey Al-Rikabi.
(Updates with trade starting in eighth paragraph)
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