Such independence is “critically important,” Christine Lagarde said in an interview broadcast Sunday on Fox, a network popular with conservatives including Trump, after she attended annual meetings in Jackson Hole, Wyoming alongside US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

“I have seen close hand what happens when a central bank stops being independent or when its independence is under threat,” said Lagarde, referring to her time working with financial institutions while heading the International Monetary Fund from 2011 until she moved to the ECB in 2019.

“It becomes dysfunctional, it starts doing things that it shouldn’t do,” the French national told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“And the next step is really – yes, it is disruption. It is instability, if not worse.”

Since returning to power in January, Trump has been pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates, which affect borrowing costs and the overall economy.

With the US central bank holding rates steady for months, the Republican president has embarked on a campaign to undermine Powell in the hope of hastening his departure from the institution.

Powell’s term runs until 2026, and a US president can not legally fire a Fed chair without cause.

With Powell not alone in setting US interest rates, Trump is also seeking to reshape the rest of the Federal Reserve Board by appointing people more in line with his economic vision.

He recently broadened his targets by calling for the resignation of Lisa Cook, a Fed board governor accused by Trump’s camp of falsifying documents to obtain a mortgage.