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By Ann Saphir
(Reuters) -Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Austan Goolsbee on Friday left the door open to supporting an interest-rate cut in September should fresh data prove reassuring, but said recent reports showing a rise in services inflation give him some pause amid what he calls the “stagflationary” impulse from tariffs.
“I feel like we still need another one at least to figure out if we’re still on the golden path,” Goolsbee told CNBC.
“If we can assure ourselves or get a hint that for this meeting, or the meetings this fall, that we aren’t on an inflationary spiral that looks to be persistent, I still think it makes sense given the strength of the economy to move rates more back to where we think they’re going to settle.”
The U.S. central bank has kept its policy rate unchanged all year as it monitors the impact of the Trump administration’s higher tariffs, which Fed policymakers expected would drive up inflation and unemployment and slow the economy.
So far the data has not validated their worst fears. With the economy slowing, both economists and financial markets expect the Fed to begin cutting rates again next month.
Still, there have been some concerning signs on inflation, along with mixed signs about whether still-strong consumer spending will continue.
Data on Friday was a case in point
U.S. retail sales increased 0.5% last month after an upwardly revised 0.9% in June, the Commerce Department reported,. This allayed some concerns that a drop in monthly job gains to just 35,000 on average over the last three months signaled a potential plunge in economic activity.
Factory output was unchanged compared to June, a separate report showed, a touch better than forecast, but heavy truck output, which is seen as a forward proxy for demand for equipment to deliver goods, fell to the lowest since last October.
Yet a different report Friday showed import prices increased 0.4% in July amid a strong rise in the cost of consumer goods. This was a potential warning sign for inflation that followed reports earlier this week that showed a jump in services prices helped push up producer prices in July, and kept consumer prices more elevated than otherwise.
“That makes me a little uneasy because that’s very unlikely to be caused by tariffs, so I’m hoping that was a blip,” Goolsbee said of the producer price index and consumer price index reports.
“Let’s not overreact to one month of import price data for sure. Let’s not overreact to one month of CPI or PPI inflation. But it’s at least an area of concern,” he said.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Chizu Nomiyama )
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