Yellen broke bread with a Trump
Fed chief ’s breakfast with Ivanka Trump comes as president weighs renomination.
WASHINGTON — Ivanka Trump and Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet L. Yellen had breakfast together this summer as President Trump considered whether to nominate Yellen for another term as the central bank chief.
The president’s daughter and Yellen ate at the Fed from 8 to 9 a.m. July 17, according to Yellen’s calendar, which the Fed releases to the public with a lag of about one month.
A White House official said Monday that Ivanka Trump “reached out” to Yellen after reading a speech Yellen made last spring about women’s participation in the economy and barriers faced by women and minority small-business owners. The White House official and a Fed spokeswoman declined to comment on what was discussed at the breakfast.
The Fed chair often meets with administration officials and members of Congress. But a sit-down with a member of the first family is highly unusual for the chief of the nation’s independent central bank.
Yellen’s four-year term is set to expire in February. She has not said publicly if she is interested in a second term, but President Trump has said he is considering renominating her.
Ivanka Trump is an unpaid assistant to the president and a key advisor. She has advocated for women’s issues, such as paid family leave and an expanded child tax credit.
Yellen, the first woman to lead the Fed, gave a speech in May at Brown University titled “So We All Can Succeed: 125 Years of Women’s Participation in the Economy.” A few weeks later, Ivanka Trump tweeted a quote from the speech — “Too many women struggle to combine aspirations for work and family” — and a link to the full text.
Ivanka Trump and Yellen had breakfast in a room in the Fed’s Beaux Arts Marriner S. Eccles Building, where Yellen frequently dines with guests.
In July, she had breakfast there twice with Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. The same month, she had lunch there with Gary Cohn, the White House’s top economic advisor and a possible rival for the Fed chairmanship.
President Trump has sent mixed messages about his opinion of Yellen.
He sharply criticized her during the 2016 presidential campaign, accusing her of keeping the benchmark interest rate “artificially low” to help fellow Democrats President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“I think she is very political, and, to a certain extent, I think she should be ashamed of herself,” Trump told CNBC in a September 2016 interview.
A Trump campaign video included images of the Fed and Yellen, casting her as part of the “political establishment” that has “bled our country dry.”
But on July 25, about a week after Yellen’s breakfast with Ivanka Trump, the president said that he was considering renominating Yellen and that she and Cohn were top candidates for the job.
“I like her. I like her demeanor. I think she’s done a good job,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “I’d like to see rates stay low. She’s historically been a low-interest-rate person.”
Yellen might have hurt her chances of renomination by strongly defending tougher financial regulations during an August speech.
Trump and many Republicans want to scale back many of the stricter rules put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, arguing that the rules have stunted economic growth.
Cohn’s chances also have taken a hit recently.
Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Cohn is unlikely to be selected because of critical comments he made about Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va.
Cohn told the Financial Times last month that the Trump administration “can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning ” white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.