Federal Reserve officials described the economy as “strong” and held their interest rate target steady at the conclusion of a two-day meeting Wednesday, as they faced questions over how far the recovery can run, the possibility of a trade war, and criticism from President Trump.
In a statement containing few alterations from previous months’ versions, central bank officials maintained the target for short-term interest rates at between 1.75 and 2 percent, where they had set it in June as part of a yearslong campaign to reverse crisis-era stimulus measures.
The optimistic assessment of the economy is the latest signal from Chairman Jerome Powell and company that they plan to continue slowly raising interest rates in the months ahead, with the intention of preventing inflation from getting out of hand as the economy grows stronger.
[Related: Businesses grow impatient with Trump’s trade war]
“The best way forward is to keep gradually raising [interest rates],” Powell said in testimony before Congress last month. “We are aware that, on the one hand, raising interest rates too slowly may lead to high inflation or financial market excesses. On the other hand, if we raise rates too rapidly, the economy could weaken and inflation could run persistently below our objective.”
The economy appeared to be in good shape as Fed officials met in Washington this week, with unemployment nearly as low as it has been in decades and growth accelerating into the summer.
The statement in Wednesday’s announcement that the economy is strong echoes claims Powell has made at every opportunity recently.
Nevertheless, a few potential problems have cropped up on the Fed’s radar, although none merited a reference in the monetary policy statement.
The first is flak from Trump, who last month broke with White House protocol to comment on monetary policy and complain about the Fed’s recent rate hikes. In Trump’s telling, further rate hikes would undercut the benefits of the tax cuts he has signed and the trade deal renegotiations he is pursuing.
So far, however, there are no signs that Trump’s commentary has influenced the Fed or Powell, who is well-positioned to handle the awkward situation.
Nor has the Fed overreacted to the possibility of a trade war. Even though Fed officials have warned that more and more business contacts throughout the economy are worried about the impact of tariffs, Powell has described the potential of further tariffs as a risk, rather than a clear negative for the economy.
Investors still believe that the Fed will stick to its current course of gradual rate hikes. Before Wednesday’s decision, bond market prices indicated that investors expect two more quarter-percentage-point hikes this year.
One question facing the Fed, though, is just how far they can raise rates before they are finished. In June, Fed members projected as a group that, in the long run, short-term interest rates will settle at just 2.9 percent. They’d hit that mark sometime next year at their current pace.
If Fed officials really believe that they are already near their inflation target, further rate hikes might be needed to keep inflation at bay. In recent months, inflation has touched the Fed’s 2 percent target.
Yet there is room for doubt that higher rates are warranted over the coming months.
One major consideration is simply that the Fed has been fooled before by rising inflation that turned out only to be temporary. For most of the past six years, the central bank has fallen short of its own 2 percent target. On Wednesday, Fed members hedged their bets by saying that inflation is merely “near” target, rather than definitively at it.
Another is that recent weeks have seen the return of a market signal that often indicates that a recession is near: A flattening yield curve, meaning that short-term interest rates are not much lower than long-term interest rates. The Fed would risk further flattening or inverting the yield curve if it pushed up short-term rates higher.
One nonvoting Fed official, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis president Neel Kashkari, warned last month that he takes the warning seriously. By risking an inverted yield curve, he wrote in a blog post, the Fed might be “putting the brakes on the economy.”
No officials dissented from Wednesday’s decision.
