William C. Dudley, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Former New York Fed President Bill Dudley is calling on the central bank not to help President Donald Trump fight his trade war with China.

In a sharply worded commentary to his one-time colleagues, Dudley urged Fed officials not to lower interest rates simply as a backstop while the president continues his tit-for-tat tariff battle with the Chinese that has escalated in recent days.

"Central bank officials face a choice: enable the Trump administration to continue down a disastrous path of trade war escalation, or send a clear signal that if the administration does so, the president, not the Fed, will bear the risks — including the risk of losing the next election," he wrote in a post on the Bloomberg News site.

Dudley went so far as to suggest the Fed could — and should — try to influence the next election against Trump.

"After all, Trump's reelection 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," he wrote. "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."

A Fed spokesman said the central bank does not use politics as a guide for its decisions.

"The Federal Reserve's policy decisions are guided solely by its congressional mandate to maintain price stability and maximum employment. Political considerations play absolutely no role," the official said in a statement.

Some economists criticized Dudley's statement as inappropriate for a former central banker.

"We fear that the opinion column ... is likely to prove counterproductive for the current Fed leadership, which we are confident had no hand in the production of the opinion piece and has had to deny immediately that 'political considerations' play any part in policymaking," Krishna Guha, head of global policy at central bank strategy at Evercore ISI, said in a note.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.