By Howard Schneider
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -High inflation remains the U.S. Federal Reserve’s main risk, though evidence of a weaker labor market still likely warrants a single quarter-point rate cut this year, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said on Wednesday.
After four years with inflation above the Fed’s 2% target, “price stability remains the primary concern,” Bostic said. “The full implications of trade policy remain unclear. It’s not known how proposed federal deregulation and tax changes will manifest, nor the extent to which those shifts offset one another.”
Bostic said firms may not be able to avoid raising prices because of higher import tariffs much longer, with the full impact possibly taking months to materialize.
While hiring has slowed, so has growth in the labor supply, leaving the U.S. still close to full employment, Bostic said.
Still, risks to the Fed’s two goals of 2% inflation and maximum employment are closer to balance, Bostic said, while “the labor market is slowing enough that some easing in policy – probably on the order of 25 basis points – will be appropriate over the remainder of this year.”
Bostic is not a voter on interest rate policy this year. But his view on the path of interest rates reflects the ongoing debate within the U.S. central bank over whether to guard against a more serious weakening of employment, which some policymakers see as a possibility given a slowing economy, with rate cuts beginning at the upcoming September meeting, or continue holding the policy rate in the current 4.25% to 4.5% range until it is clearer that inflation will decline.
The Fed meets on September 16-17 with investors assigning a roughly 90% probability to a rate cut at that meeting.
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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