St. Louis Fed president Alberto Musalem on Thursday became the latest central bank official to strike a note of caution, airing concerns about inflation amid talk of higher tariffs and changing immigration policies from the Trump administration.
“I believe it is appropriate to monitor economic conditions and the outlook before making any further adjustments to the stance of policy,” Musalem said during a speech at the Economic Club of New York.
The Fed kept its rates on hold at its meeting last month following three consecutive cuts as central bankers grew more cautious about the future path of inflation.
After a full percentage point of easing, rates are now “modestly restrictive,” Musalem said, and “meaningfully less restrictive” than six months ago.
To lower rates, Musalem said he would like to gain more confidence that inflation is on a downward trajectory toward 2%, the Fed’s goal.
Read more: How the Fed rate decision affects your bank accounts, loans, credit cards, and investments
But the risk that progress on inflation could stall is now greater than the risk of substantial weakening in the job market, he added.
If higher inflation persists as a result of policies or longer-term inflation expectations rise, maintaining “a more restrictive path of monetary policy” might be appropriate, he added.
A hotter-than-expected inflation reading for January from the Consumer Price Index (CPI) made it much more likely that the Fed will keep rates on hold for the foreseeable future.
On a “core” basis, which strips out the more volatile costs of food and gas, prices in January climbed 0.4% over the prior month — higher than December’s 0.2% monthly gain and the largest monthly rise since April 2023.
Read more: Jobs, inflation, and the Fed: How they’re all related
Core CPI prices also rose 3.3% over last year, marking an uptick from the 3.2% seen in December, which was the first time since July that year-over-year core CPI showed a deceleration in price growth.
The latest reading from the Fed’s preferred inflation target, the “core” Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Index, is due out next week.
Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee said Thursday that it won’t be as “sobering” as the CPI reading.
“The CPI number was not great,” Goolsbee said at a Chamber of Commerce event in Chicago. “The PCE number … is probably going to still be not great, but it’s not [going to be] as sobering as the CPI number.”
Atlanta Federal Reserve president Raphael Bostic told Yahoo Finance Wednesday that interest rate cuts are still on the table this year but that following the hotter-than-expected CPI reading from January, “I think the biggest question right now is whether that data point represents a new trend or just a bump in the road.”
