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Fed holds tight

3 1
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Business & Economy

Business & Economy

The Big Story

Fed keeps rates steady amid Trump attacks

The Federal Reserve kept interbank interest rates at a range of 4.25 to 4.5 percent Wednesday amid trade policy fluctuations and pressure from President Trump.

© The Associated Press

Fed officials stressed the overall health of U.S. economic conditions, which has seen decreasing inflation in recent months along with steady levels of low unemployment.

“What we’re waiting for, to reduce rates, is to understand what will happen with the tariff inflation. There’s a lot of uncertainty about that,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday.

“Someone has to pay the tariffs … between the manufacturer, the exporter, the importer, the retailer, ultimately somebody putting it into a good of some kind – or just the consumer buying it.”

The unemployment rate has held at 4.2 percent in its past three readings, with about 7 million people out of work in a labor force of 170 million.

President Trump has been calling for the Fed to resume its interest rate cuts, which it started in the back half of last year but has paused since January after inflation ticked up over the fall.

Trump went so far as to call Powell a “numbskull” recently for maintaining his pause, which will increase interest costs on sky-high U.S. debt levels that are likely to be made worse by GOP tax-and-spending cut legislation now making its way through Congress.

However, markets and economists expected the Fed to maintain rates while businesses react to Trump’s tariffs.

Tobias Burns has more here.

 

Welcome to The Hill’s Business & Economy newsletter, I'm Sylvan Lane — covering the intersection of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

 

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