"I wouldn't associate Jay Powell with craziness," Managing Director Christine Lagarde told CNBC in an interview. "He comes across - and members of his board - as extremely serious, solid and certainly keen to base their decisions on actual information."

Trump made the comment in response to Wall Street's sell-off after the S&P 500 and the Dow marked their worst losses in eight months. The slump triggered a surge of global selling that sent European stocks to a more than an 18-month low on Thursday and knocked down Asian shares.

Worries about higher borrowing costs have sparked the U.S. stock sales in recent days, while a spike in U.S. Treasury yields and solid U.S. economic data have raised concerns that the Fed may pick up the pace of its interest rate hikes.

"Actually it's a correction that we've been waiting for a long time, but I really disagree with what the Fed is doing,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday.

"I think ... the Fed is making a mistake. They’re so tight. I think the Fed has gone crazy," added Trump, who tapped Powell to lead the bank but has publicly criticized the Fed under his tenure.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

Stocks treated in this article : NASDAQ Comp., DJ Industrial, NASDAQ 100, S&P 500