A cooler-than-expected inflation reading from May is not likely to shake the view of most Federal Reserve policymakers that rates should stay on hold until there is more clarity about the impact from President Trump’s tariffs.
Some economists were expecting to see higher costs from those tariffs showing up in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released Wednesday, but instead CPI showed that inflation pressures were relatively stable and even eased on a monthly basis.
The “core” measure of CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, rose 2.8% over the past year in May, matching April. Monthly core prices increased 0.1%, a touch below April’s 0.2% gain.
Economist Claudia Sahm, founder of Sahm Consulting, told Yahoo Finance that the May report doesn’t “necessarily tell us where we are headed by the end of the year,” and “I don’t think we have a picture yet of what the costs are from the current” Trump administration trade policy.
But what this does, she added, is delay the Fed’s ability to conclude that any tariff price increases are in fact temporary — a conclusion that would allow it to start cutting rates again.
This “may mean we delay the rate cuts.”
Investors are not expecting an easing of monetary policy until September at the earliest. The Fed is widely expected to hold rates steady at its next meeting on June 17-18.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday reiterated his view that the Federal Reserve should cut interest rates by one percentage point, saying the latest inflation figures were “great.”
“CPI just out. Great numbers! Fed should lower one full point. Would pay much less interest on debt coming due. So important!!!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in all capital letters.
Read more: How much control does the president have over the Fed and interest rates?
But a Labor Department jobs report released last week makes it even less likely the Fed will consider rate cuts in the near term, Fed watchers said, since it doesn’t show that the labor market is grinding to a halt.
The Fed has not altered its benchmark rates at all in 2025 after reducing them by a full percentage point at the end of 2024, citing uncertainties about Trump’s policies.
In fact, in recent weeks, several Fed policymakers have made it clear they are more worried about inflation than employment and thus are content to be patient about any changes to the Fed’s current stance.
“I see greater upside risks to inflation at this juncture and potential downside risks to employment and output growth down the road, and this leads me to continue to support maintaining the FOMC’s policy rate at its current setting if upside risks to inflation remain,” Federal Reserve governor Adriana Kugler said last week in a speech at the Economic Club of New York.
Kansas City Fed president Jeff Schmid also said Thursday he is very focused on the risk for higher inflation from tariffs and that the Fed should “not let down our guard.”
“While the tariffs are likely to push up prices, the extent of the increase is not certain, and likely will not be fully apparent for some time,” Schmid added.
RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas told Yahoo Finance on Wednesday after the CPI release that “we were not really seeing much of the pass through, if some at all, from the tariffs,” noting a 0.3% decline in new vehicles and 0.5% drop in used cars and trucks.
“But don’t get too comfortable,” he added. “When [companies] hike prices by 10% to 15%, it gets passed through eventually.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Claudia Sahm’s name. We regret the error.
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