By Howard Schneider
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The likelihood of a Federal Reserve rate cut in September is now seen near 100% after new data showed U.S. inflation increasing at a moderate pace in July and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he thought an aggressive half-point cut was possible given recent weak employment numbers.
Traders in contracts tied to the benchmark federal funds rate on Wednesday put the odds of a quarter-percentage point cut at the Fed’s September 16-17 meeting at 99.9%, according to estimates calculated by the CME Group’s FedWatch tool that followed the release of July Consumer Price Index data on Tuesday and later comments by Bessent noting that the Fed used fears of a weakening job market as justification for a larger cut last September.
Trump has slammed that cut as politically motivated given the proximity to the November presidential election.
Bessent rooted his argument in recent Bureau of Labor Statistics revisions showing job growth had slowed to a crawl in May, June and July, though initial estimates for May and June showed stronger employment growth that Fed officials used to argue that the labor market remained in good shape.
“If we’d seen those numbers in May, in June, I suspect we could have had rate cuts in June and July. So that tells me that there’s a very good chance of a 50 basis-point rate cut,” in September, Bessent said in an interview on Bloomberg television.Â
(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
