The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged for a third meeting in a row on Wednesday, as officials stuck to a wait-and-see approach amid heightened uncertainty about how significantly President Trump’s tariffs will raise inflation and slow growth. The unanimous decision to stand pat will keep interest rates at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent. Rates…
Less than a year ago, the Federal Reserve took decisive action to bolster the U.S. economy. With inflation easing and the labor market starting to soften, the central bank opted to go big, lowering interest rates by half a percentage point and signaling further cuts to come. Rather than a panicky response to a crisis…
One hundred days of President Trump. Seventy days of whipsaw trading in financial markets. Thirty-two days of losses. More than $6.5 trillion wiped from the value of public companies. For financial markets, the 7 percent drop in the S&P 500 is the worst start to a presidential term since Gerald R. Ford took over from…
Stock market gyrations. Inflation. Layoffs of federal workers. A possible recession. Children may overhear their parents talking about these things and not fully understand what’s going on or how it may affect their family’s finances. But if the children have questions, parents should be ready to talk, experts say. “Parents are the biggest influence on…
President Trump has taken a whipsaw approach to tariffs, widening and shifting course in determining which countries and goods will be subject to them. But across Mr. Trump’s political career, his case for tariffs has remained consistent, relying on a number of false and misleading claims to describe a global trade system that is “unfair”…
Inflation cooled unexpectedly sharply in March, a welcome development given the uncertainties surrounding President Trump’s global tariffs that are widely expected to stoke price pressures while also denting growth. The Consumer Price Index climbed 2.4 percent last month from a year earlier, a far slower pace than February’s 2.8 percent increase and the lowest annual…
The notion that the Federal Reserve will rush in to rescue investors in a crisis has comforted investors for decades. But in the big market downturn induced by President Trump’s tariffs, no Fed rescue is in sight. Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, made that clear on Friday. The tariffs are much “larger than…
Americans are increasingly anxious about their jobs and finances as the Trump administration’s trade policies and government cutbacks stoke concern about the economy. Consumer confidence tumbled this month to its lowest level since January 2021, the Conference Board reported on Tuesday, extending a decline that has been underway since shortly after President Trump was elected…
Britons are bracing for a burst of higher inflation for much of this year as many household bills jump next month, a revival of the cost-of-living pressures that have squeezed household budgets in recent years. Next month, the average annual energy bill is set to rise 6.4 percent as the price cap resets. Water bills,…
Just days after President Trump won the 2024 election, Jerome H. Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, sidestepped a question about how the central bank would grapple with a toxic combination of high inflation, stagnating growth and rising unemployment. “The whole plan is not to have stagflation,” Mr. Powell told reporters. “Knock on wood, we’ve…