U.S. President Donald Trump wrote Fed Chair Jerome Powell urging him to lower interest rates, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday. Leavitt, at a briefing, displayed a copy of Trump's handwritten notes to Powell on a piece of paper showing the interest rates charged by more than two dozen countries.

Asked about Trump’s barrage of insults, Powell’s comment that the Fed was focused “100%” on its inflation and jobs target drew applause from the audience at a European