NEW YORK, May 1 Reuters The looming U.S. presidential election will not influence the Federal Reserve39;s interest rate decisions, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday, adding that policymakers were at peace with keeping political considerations out of their decisionmaking process.

Powell, speaking in a news conference after the end of the U.S. central bank39;s latest policy meeting, said Fed policy decisions will be guided by what we think the right thing for the economy is, repeating a longheld stance of ignoring politics in the central bank39;s economic analysis.

If you go down the road, where do you stop? And so we39;re not on that road, Powell said. We39;re on the road where we39;re serving all the American people, and making our decisions based on the data and how those data affect the outlook and the balance of risks.

The issue of the Fed39;s independence jumped back into the spotlight last week when the Wall Street Journal reported that allies of former President Donald Trump are drafting proposals that would attempt to erode the central bank39;s independence and give Trump more influence over the Fed if he wins the Nov. 5 election.

Trump, who nominated Powell to be Fed chief in late 2017, unleashed withering verbal attacks on the Fed for raising rates in 2018, calling its policymakers boneheads and loco and threatening to fire or demote Powell on multiple occasions. But the controversy was not mentioned in the Fed39;s 2018 meeting transcripts, which…