The Federal Reserve voted Wednesday to keep interest rates unchanged, a decision which elicited two dissenting votes from the central bank’s board of governors for the first time in more than 30 years.
At the press conference following Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, Powell announced that the central bank will continue to target an interest rate between 4.25 and 4.5 percent, where it has remained since December. This comes despite President Donald Trump’s urging Powell to lower rates.
However, two FOMC board members dissented from the majority’s decision to hold interest rates level.
Fed Governor Christopher Waller and Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, both Trump appointees, said that they preferred to cut rates by a quarter of a percentage point.
Waller has been cited as a possible nominee to replace Powell when he retires as Fed chair next May.
The last time two Fed governors dissented was 1993.
The FOMC statement said “recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year.” This statement is a revision from its June statement that indicators suggested the economy “continued to expand at a solid pace.”
Trump has continually attacked Powell for keeping interest rates at what he believes is an elevated level. The 47th president has also criticized Powell over the cost of the renovation of the nation’s central bank headquarters, which has far exceeded its initial estimates.
Waller has made his case for cutting interest rates in a recent speech, stating, “First, tariffs are one-off increases in the price level and do not cause inflation beyond a temporary surge.”
“Standard central banking practice is to ‘look through’ such price-level effects as long as inflation expectations are anchored, which they are,” he added.
“Second, a host of data argues that monetary policy should be close to neutral, not restrictive,” he stated.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said during a Breitbart policy event on Wednesday that the Fed suffers from “Tariff Derangement Syndrome” and should “use a little imagination” to lower interest rates.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3
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