- Analysis: Fed meeting minutes reveal growing divisions among policymakers, with several officials signaling openness to a rate cut this year amid modest inflation pressures and tariff uncertainties, while others favor maintaining the current stance. Analysts such as UBS’s Paul Donovan label this cautious approach “masterful inactivity,” underscoring the Fed’s internal debate amid lingering economic ambiguities.
President Trump may finally be gaining some allies in his battle to bring down the base rate, with recent Fed minutes showing opinion among Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members is beginning to diverge on the correct path forward.
While the FOMC did vote unanimously to keep the base rate at its current level of 4.25% to 4.5% at its most recent gathering in late June—much to the ire of the Oval Office—notes from the meeting hint that members may not be singing from the same hymn sheet for much longer.
This reflects the statements regional bank presidents are making publicly, prompting some analysts to question if members of the FOMC are already trying their hand at Jerome Powell’s role, which the Fed chair is due to vacate in 2026.
The notes, released yesterday afternoon, show division on a number of issues. The first was whether a rate cut should happen, and if so, how soon.
Another was which of the Fed’s dual mandates—inflation at 2% and maximum employment—is currently in the foreground of thinking. And a further factor is how much inflationary pass-through there would be from the White House’s tariff regime.
On if and when a rate cut should happen, for example, the meeting notes read “most participants” want to see a cut this year, saying inflationary pressures from tariffs may be “temporary or modest” and that medium- and longer-term inflation expectations had remained well anchored.
A “couple of participants” said they wanted to see how data would evolve between June and the next meeting in a little over two weeks. They noted they would be open to cutting the base rate in July if the numbers came back strong—which would be welcome news to the president, who for months has been blasting Powell for his refusal to cut rates.
Conversely, “some participants saw the most likely appropriate path of monetary policy as involving no reductions in the target range for the Federal funds rate this year.” Their justification was that inflation readings in some cases are still exceeding the 2% goal, adding that risks to short-term inflation may still have meaningful impact.
Another area of division is tariffs, with members splitting on how much of an issue tariffs may prove to be—after all, the Oval Office has already snuck through a universal 10% hike on imports with inflation holding fairly steady at around 2.4%.
The meeting notes read that “many participants” said the eventual impact of tariffs could be mitigated thanks to trade deals, while “several” others warned firms not directly impacted by the economic sanctions may still take the opportunity to hike up their prices in line with wider market increases.
Such thinking has been slammed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who called these fears “tariff derangement syndrome.”
He told Fox News earlier this week: “Inflation expectations are very well anchored. The dog that didn’t bark was inflation due to tariffs, I call it tariff derangement syndrome. And the Federal Reserve … the committee seems to be a little off here in their judgment.”
Conversely Jeremy Siegel, emeritus professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said the economy’s stability is the very reason not to change one of its fundamentals.
Typically an advocate for cutting rates, Siegel wrote in his weekly commentary for WisdomTree (where he is senior economist): “There is no evidence whatsoever of reaccelerating inflationary pressure from the monetary side, which remains one of the most important metrics I monitor.
“The Fed should be paying more attention to this weakness, but the optics of a 4.1% unemployment rate—improving relative to expectations—make it difficult in their minds to justify a cut in July. With no more employment reports before the July 30th FOMC meeting, and inflation readings unlikely to show a sharp deterioration, the Fed will keep rates steady for now.”
‘Masterful inactivity’
Despite the needle moving back to middle ground between hawks and doves on the FOMC, economists weren’t impressed by the developments.
UBS chief economist Paul Donovan, for example, called the seesawing rhetoric a “master class in the art of sitting on a fence.”
In a note shared with Fortune this morning, Donovan discussed the meeting notes’ flip-flops: “U.S. President Trump’s trade tax inflation might be a one-off, or it might persist. The labor market may be weak enough to justify rate cuts, or not. Uncertainty over trade tax levels is a problem, but the real issue is the lack of clarity about the severity of second-round effects (e.g., profit-led inflation).
“Masterful inactivity seems the default policy option.”
Likewise, Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid noted the “divide about how restrictive policy currently was, as well as the tariff impact on inflation going forward.”
Reid added: “This growing divergence in expectations matches the dot plot distribution we saw last month, where 10 of 19 officials penciled in at least two rate cuts this year while seven officials saw no cuts, and the other two policymakers saw one cut.”
