(Reuters) – San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly still sees two interest-rate cuts this year as a “reasonable” projection, but with the labor market solid, the economy still growing and inflation edging down, policymakers can wait to reduce rates until they assess how businesses will adjust to tariff costs.
Speaking by phone late Thursday from Fairbanks, Alaska, Daly said local business and community leaders there expect that tariffs will increase their costs and are strategizing about how to find workarounds, but they also expect some levies to be relaxed over time, or to allow for some exceptions.
Meanwhile inflation has come down from its peak, and the Fed’s interest-rate cuts last year mean that projects businesses had put on hold are now “penciling out,” and they are going ahead with them, she said.
“We have no reason to rush to judgment because policy is in a good place, the economy is in a good place, and so we can take the time that is needed to really assess the total impact, to learn the scope, magnitude, and timing of the actual final tariff packages, and then also learn about the impact on the economy,” Daly said.
U.S. central bankers last week left their policy rate in the 4.25%-4.50% range, and the bulk of them signaled that two quarter-of-a-percentage-point interest-rate cuts by yearend would likely be appropriate, the same rate-path signal they gave in December.
“That’s my posture: I haven’t changed my projection since last year because… I don’t have enough information to make that change,” Daly said. “We need to give the new administration and the industries that are being affected by it time to understand what’s being changed and adjust to those changes and then see the impact it has on prices and growth and the labor market. And right now, we just don’t know.”
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Dan Burns and Anna Driver)
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