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The president argued that lowering home prices would cut into Americans’ wealth gains, and stressed that lowering interest rates would help homebuyers struggling with affordability.

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President Trump said during a cabinet meeting on Thursday that he would like to keep home prices elevated to help Americans grow their wealth through real estate, while working to reduce borrowing costs in order to expand homeownership access.

The president emphasized homeownership’s role in building wealth and cautioned against policies that might lower home prices and cut into the wealth gains of recent years.

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“We’re going to keep those prices up. We’re not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn’t work very hard can buy a home,” Trump said.

“I don’t want to see those values coming down,” he continued. “We have millions of people that own houses, and for the first time in their life, they’re wealthy because the house is worth $500,000 or $600,000 or more or less, but more than it’s ever been worth before. I don’t want to do anything to knock that down.”

The president also recognized that some Americans are struggling with the cost of homeownership, and stressed that lowering interest rates further would help make homeownership more accessible for those classes.

“The best thing that can happen for both groups of people is lower interest rates, and those interest rates are coming down,” President Trump said. “And with a proper intelligent person at the Fed, that person will be able to work with us to get interest rates down. That covers all of the sins; it covers everything. Lower interest rates keep the values up for the people that have housing and lets other people buy housing.”

On Friday morning, the president announced his nomination of Kevin M. Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve following the end of Jerome Powell’s term in May. In order to take up the post, Warsh will still need to be confirmed by the Senate.

During his first tenure at the Fed as a governor, Warsh became known as a “hawk” when it came to curbing inflation through higher interest rates.

Since becoming a candidate for Fed chair, however, Warsh’s ideas on rates and inflation have made a reversal, and he has voiced his criticism of the central bank publicly, saying their reluctance to cut rates was “a mark against them.”

At the Thursday cabinet meeting, Trump also discussed rebuilding efforts in the Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, which was ravaged by wildfires a year ago. The president praised the administration’s ability to quickly issue permits for residents to rebuild, while also criticizing a proposal the president said had been made to build low-income housing in the neighborhood, noting, “I’m not going to allow it to happen.”

It was unclear what proposal the president was referring to, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told ABC7, “The city of Los Angeles is not pushing affordable or low-income housing. What we are pushing is the rebuilding of the Palisades.” The office of LA City Councilwoman Traci Park also told the outlet it was unaware of any such project proposals in the area.

Email Lillian Dickerson

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