President Donald Trump arrives at the White House in 2018. Official White House photo | Andrea Hanks

A former top Federal Reserve official suggested Tuesday that the Fed should avoid responding to the effects of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and even consider how its actions might affect Trump’s re-election prospects – an argument that drew an unusual rejection from the Fed.

William Dudley, former president of the New York Fed, argued in a Bloomberg Opinion piece that if the Fed were to accommodate the president – by further cutting interest rates, for example – it could lead him to escalate his trade war and elevate the risk of a recession. Dudley, who was the No. 2 official on the Fed’s rate-setting panel from 2009 until he stepped down last year, is a senior research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Economic Policy Studies.

“This manufactured disaster-in-the-making presents the Federal Reserve with a dilemma: Should it mitigate the damage by providing offsetting stimulus, or refuse to play along?” Dudley wrote.

His most dramatic suggestion was for the politically independent Fed to consider Trump’s re-election prospects in formulating its policies.

“Trump’s re-election,” Dudley wrote, “arguably presents a threat to the U.S. and global economy, to the Fed’s independence and its ability to achieve its employment and inflation objectives. If the goal of monetary policy is to achieve the best long-term economic outcome, then Fed officials should consider how their decisions will affect the political outcome in 2020.”

Dudley said that by taking a harder line on future rate cuts, the Fed would discourage Trump from further escalation of his trade war with China by increasing the costs of such a move. He said it would also reassert the Fed’s independence by distancing itself from the administration’s policies and conserve much-needed ammunition in the form of future rate cuts if the economy slows further.

Trump himself, who last week asserted that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was an “enemy,” kept up his own attacks on the central bank Tuesday, tweeting that the Fed “loves” the troubles U.S. manufacturers are facing.

The president’s tweet was his latest public effort to pressure the central bank to lower interest rates dramatically. The Fed cut rates by a quarter-point last month and is expected to do so again in September. But Trump has been demanding much more aggressive cuts of a full percentage point to counteract the four rate hikes the Fed delivered last year.

The president has repeatedly argued that the Fed’s failure to cut U.S. rates more quickly is making the dollar too strong against other currencies and thus hurting American exporters – an argument most economists find fault with.

In his opinion piece, Dudley argued that if the ultimate goal is a healthy economy, then the Fed should consider deciding against further rate cuts if those cuts would be intended to counter damage from Trump’s trade war.

“What if the Fed’s accommodation encourages the president to escalate the trade war further, increasing the risk of a recession?” Dudley asked. “The central bank’s efforts to cushion the blow might not be merely ineffectual. They might actually make things worse.”

The Fed issued a response asserting that it is determined to remain apolitical.

“The Federal Reserve’s policy decisions are guided solely by its congressional mandate to maintain price stability and maximum employment,” said spokeswoman Michelle Smith. “Political considerations play absolutely no role.”

Dudley acknowledged that his proposal defies the conventional belief that the Fed should take no positions on policy matters that are normally handled by the president and Congress and should remain ready to cushion the economy from any damage from those policies.