The Federal Reserve is probably heading into wait-and-see mode. Friday’s excellent labor market report showed that the unemployment rate fell to just 4.1%, meaningfully reducing the urgency to cut policy rates in a world where inflation is still above the Fed’s 2% target. President-elect Donald Trump should follow the central bank’s lead and put tariffs, deportations and any extra tax cuts on hold, at least until the economy proves that it would benefit from intervention.

It’s hard to see why the incoming administration would want to rock the boat. The economy is enjoying one of its longest stretches ever of unemployment around 4%, and the one thing we know about the Trump agenda is that its ramifications are unknowable. JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Michael Cembalest has referred to Trump and his team as “alchemists” in a macroeconomic laboratory. They’re proposing 19th century-style tariffs that — taken at face value — would probably provide at least a technical boost to reported inflation. On top of that, they’re entertaining a mix of deportations and tax cuts that could leave the labor market so tight that it too drives inflation higher.

The specifics are hard to game out, but Trump’s plans already appear to be influencing price expectations. Though difficult to measure, economists tend to believe that inflation expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and a University of Michigan survey published Friday showed that US consumers’

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