President Donald Trump may have a new target in his trade war.
With markets already moving — including a falling euro and advancing global stocks — in response to the largely surprisingly dovish comments from European Central Bank head Mario Draghi Tuesday, the U.S. leader weighed in, too.
The euro EURUSD, -0.2496% was trading at $1.1195 against its U.S. counterpart as the president tweeted. That’s slightly above where it stood, near $1.1187, as Draghi spoke earlier. It traded at $1.1218 late Monday in New York.
Global markets reacted to a speech in Portugal by Draghi, who said that if the region’s economy slows and the ECB’s inflation target is threatened, “additional stimulus will be required.” He cited the threat of trade protectionism as one of the key factors weighing on exports, particularly manufacturing, and said that the bank’s asset-purchase program “still has considerable headroom.”
Read: Risks of global recession grow as Trump and Xi refuse to blink, Roubini says
Commentary: The exhausted ECB dove insists it can still fly
Some market commentators lamented the Trump interjection, again, over central bank policy.
In addition to the ECB meeting in Portugal, the Bank of England makes an interest-rate decision Thursday. The Federal Reserve kicks off a two-day meeting Tuesday as markets increasingly expect a rate cut at some point this year, although not quite yet. Trump had reupped his Fed criticism as recently as an interview that aired Sunday night.
“Frankly, if we had a different person in the Federal Reserve that wouldn’t have raised interest rates so much, we would have been at least a point and a half higher” [referring to the first quarter’s 3.2% rise in GDP],” the president told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.
When asked if he was worried his criticism was putting the Fed’s Jerome Powell in a box, Trump replied: “Yes, I do. But I’m going to do it anyway because — I’ve waited long enough.”
Read: History suggests Fed can’t make ‘insurance cuts’ to keep expansion alive