Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, has lowered his projection for interest rate cuts in 2024 from two reductions to a single cut, citing tariffs as a significant barrier to bringing inflation down.
He now expects inflation to reach the Fed’s 2% target by early 2027, later than he previously anticipated but broadly consistent with forecasts from other Fed officials. Although the median Fed projection still implies roughly half a percentage point of cuts this year, a growing number of policymakers are signaling support for only one reduction or none at all.
In contrast to Chair Jerome Powell, who recently described tariff-related price pressures as “transitory,” Bostic avoided that label. The term recalls earlier misjudgments about pandemic-era inflation, and Bostic said he prefers to wait for the effects of policy decisions to be fully realized before revising his economic outlook further.