Professor Bao’s decision to stay on has produced two objective impacts that are giving the White House a great deal of trouble.

First, it blocks Trump’s political pathway to quickly install more dovish candidates to fill the vacancies on the board of directors in the near term.

Second, Powell’s continued stay means the new chair cannot fully take control of the future tempo of rate cuts, and objectively raises the rate-cut threshold that Trump has been pushing for all along—leaving Powell still with influence over monetary policy.

Faced with Professor Bao, who has the word “resistance” carved into his face, Trump’s response is that he doesn’t care whether Powell remains a Federal Reserve Board governor.

Trump, the more he says he doesn’t care, the more he actually cares more than anyone else in the world. But Trump still has to maintain a casual, offhand attitude to offset his opponents’ strategic intentions, so as to dispel the outside perception that “the White House is being led by the Fed.” It has a bit of the feel of “living in a glass house and yet making a show of not stealing”—a classic case of overdoing the denials.

Since the start of his second term in 2025, Trump’s conflicts with the Fed have kept escalating. From forcefully calling for rate cuts to singling out and criticizing Powell, and even threatening lawsuits and threats of dismissal, the back-and-forth between them has shifted from policy differences to a struggle over personnel power. This time, Powell’s “breaking the convention” decision to stay on is, in practice, a fait accompli disadvantage for the White House in this contest.

Trump’s series of attacks and pressure on the Fed ended up backfiring. These political pressures didn’t just fail to bring about rate cuts; they actually pushed the Fed into a defensive posture, making it even more cautious about rate cuts and further delaying the policy shift.

In short, Trump’s face is the most important thing. When it comes to bringing down his dignity, nobody and nothing else can do it—really. After all, the one who can defeat yesterday’s Trump must be today’s Trump. #WCTC交易王PK $BTC