How do you know what influences the Fed?
By following the Fed for half a century.
Historically there have been two responses to White House pressure:
(1) Ignoring it. This happens 99% of the time. The governors are independent and owe the administration nothing.
(2) Holding rates higher than necessary. This occurs when Fed governors think that a rate slash that immediately follows political pressure would undercut their credibility.
What DOES influence the Fed is data. They are far from perfect when reacting to it, but that’s the input they follow.
The singular occasion when the above didn’t hold true was when Arthur Burns succumbed to pressure from Richard Nixon.
“An analysis of the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) transcripts from the period concluded that political considerations impacted the Fed’s decision-making and were an important contributor to the rise in US inflation in the 1970s.”