Scott Bessent says Fed could cut rates by September or 'sooner'
"I think that the criteria is that tariffs were not inflationary. If they're going to follow that criteria, I think that they could do it sooner than then, but certainly by September," Bessent said, adding that 'I guess this tariff derangement syndrome happens even over at the Fed."
His comments on Fox News's "The Ingraham Angle," come as Bessent's boss, President Trump, intensifies his own pressure on the Fed and chairman Jerome Powell to lower rates by as many as 3 percentage points.
"Jerome—You are, as usual, 'Too Late'," Trump told Powell in a note the president posted on Truth Social Monday, telling the Fed chair that he has "cost the USA a fortune" and urging him to "lower The Rate—by a lot!"
Bessent has also ramped up his commentary about the Fed this week, once again arguing that no inflation has yet shown up from tariffs and if it does it will be a one-time increase that wouldn't justify any rate increases.
Bessent is among the candidates to replace Powell when the Fed chair's term expires next May, according to people close to the administration.
On Bloomberg Monday the Treasury secretary compared the Fed to an old person who takes a fall and then is likely to fall again because he or she keeps looking down at his or her feet. The original fall in his view was the Fed's slow reaction to a rise in inflation in 2022.
'They seem a little frozen at the wheel here,' he told Bloomberg.
On Tuesday, Powell didn't rule out an interest rate reduction this month at the Fed's next meeting on July 28-29 but noted the central bank would have cut rates by now if not for the tariffs introduced by the Trump administration.
'We went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs,' he said on a panel at a European Central Bank monetary policy conference in Portugal.
The Fed lowered rates by a full percentage point in 2024 but has held rates steady so far in 2025 as it waits to see if inflation will pick up this summer due to the tariffs.
"I wouldn't take any meeting off the table or put it directly on the table," Powell said when asked about the possibility of a cut in July. "It's going to depend on how the data evolved."
Bessent on Tuesday told Fox that Fed officials recently lowered their growth forecast for the US economy, and that should be reason enough to proceed with cuts by September given that inflation has come down since the period in September 2024 when the Fed decided to cut by 50 basis points.
"Sure, why not the fall?" he said.
Another sign of a slowdown in the labor market showed up Wednesday in data revealing that private employers unexpectedly cut 33,000 jobs in June.
The data from ADP showed private payrolls fell by 33,000 last month in June, below the 29,000 job gains seen in May and the 98,000 additions expected by economists.
This marked the first month of job losses in the private sector since March 2023. May's initial reading of 37,000 private payroll additions had been the lowest monthly total since March 2023.
Another report from the Labor Department will be released Thursday. Economists expect that report to show 116,000 nonfarm payrolls were added in June, a move lower from the 139,000 seen in May. The unemployment rate is anticipated to have moved up to 4.3% from 4.2% the month prior.
Two Fed governors, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, have both made a case for rate cuts in July, arguing they are more worried about the labor market and unemployment than inflation at this point.
Other Fed colleagues continue to argue that the Fed should wait on any rate cuts to gauge the ultimate impact on inflation.
Atlanta Federal Reserve president Raphael Bostic Monday said that he wants to wait and see how tariffs play out in the economy before making a decision on what to do with interest rates, cautioning that Americans could see higher inflation from tariffs that could be longer lasting.
'I like to move in a direction when I know which direction to move in,' said Bostic in a conversation in the UK. 'That would for me require more information than we have today.'
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