In the past month Donald Trump has called the US Federal Reserve “crazy”, “out of control” and “loco”. This week he returned for another bite. The Fed is the “my biggest threat”, said the president, and he is “not happy” with the chairman, Jerome Powell, an official he nominated to office less than a year ago.

The upwards adjustments to US interest rates are “too fast”, argued Trump, because inflation is “very low”.

Expect to hear more of this nonsense because the Fed shows no sign of being distracted from its course. The odds were already short on a rise in US rates in December and they shortened again on Wednesday with the publication of minutes of policymakers’ last meeting. The notes showed a clear preference for “further gradual increases”.

It is tempting to say the Fed is “defying” Trump, but the description is not quite right. It is actually ignoring the president’s jibes, which is exactly what it is supposed to do as an independent central bank. The focus should be on the administration’s economic policies.

On that score, the main facts are that Trump is pursuing deep tax cuts, adding substantially to the level of US debt and importing some inflation via tariffs on $250bn-worth of Chinese goods.

And he is doing so at a moment when the US economy is growing strongly and enjoying an employment boom.

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In those circumstances, the Fed is almost bound to conclude that its base rate, which was raised to 2% to 2.25% last month, probably needs to go a little higher. Yes, US inflation currently stands at a 2.2%, which Trump can call low, but the Fed must look around the next corner. The current stance on rates can be viewed as neutral. To call it “crazy” is ridiculous.

Maybe the president will sustain the silliness so he has someone to blame when the economic cycle turns.

But he would be better advised to say nothing. Powell’s term runs for four years and the bond market would freak out if there were an attempt to remove him. Indeed, any sign that political bullying could succeed would be taken badly. Trump is not going to win this scrap.

Unilever should have listened

Unilever has “no regrets” about proposing to move its headquarters to the Netherlands, says the finance director, Graeme Pitkethly, even though the “simplification” plan had to be scrapped when angry UK fund managers rebelled. In fact, he says, the exercise provided valuable information the board will use to try to craft a plan B.

One admires his ability to put a brave face on events. Come on, though, Unilever spent 10 months contemplating its options and then seven more months trying to persuade investors to swallow the choice of Rotterdam.

There were more than 200 meetings with fund managers. Aside from the humiliation of having to retreat before a vote had taken place, a lot of management time was wasted.

As for insights, the main revelation wasn’t actually a surprise: UK fund managers, or some of them, are prisoners of their investment mandates. That is why they protested at the prospect of seeing a Dutch-domiciled Unilever disappear from the FTSE 100 index, indeed from all UK indices.

They didn’t object to the principle of dismantling the clunky Anglo-Dutch structure, but they definitely cared if the new model would prevent them from owning the shares. “The problems for shareholders were foreseeable,” said Columbia Threadneedle on the day Unilever dropped its plan. Quite.

The other insight, of a sort, is that companies can’t assume fund managers will fall into line if they’re shoved hard enough. It had been obvious for months that a substantial core of UK managers were furious. Their discontent was not hard to detect, even before they went public.

Put another way, it’s a good idea to listen to what you’re being told. But it should not require 200 meetings, and a crew of City advisers, to learn that lesson.