Chicago Federal Reserve president Austan Goolsbee said on Wednesday that the data showing moderate consumer inflation in the U.S. in April does not yet fully reflect the impact of rising U.S. import tariffs. He explained that some part of April’s inflation figures reflects the lagged nature of data and that it will take time for current inflation trends to show up in the data.
Goolsbee emphasised that the Fed is still very much holding its breath, waiting for more information and to get past the noise in the data. He cautioned against drawing conclusions about long-term trends amid short-term volatility, stressing that the Fed’s task is to be a steady hand and not to respond to daily gyrations of the stock market and policy pronouncements.