FED: Boston's Collins: Tariffs To Move Economy Away From Favorable Conditions
Jul-15 18:57
Boston Fed President Collins (2025 voter) reiterated in a speech Tuesday that she advocates an "actively patient" approach to policymaking. Speech text here. Note that she'd already implied in a previous appearance that she was one of two FOMC participants to only pencil in 1 cut in 2025, putting her slightly on the hawkish side of the median (recall 10 of 19 participants in June saw 2 or more cuts).
- Collins writes: "In my view, the economy continues to be in a good place overall, close to the Congressionally mandated objectives of price stability and full employment. However, going forward, I expect to see some upward pressures on inflation, as well as some downward pressures on employment and economic growth."
- She acknowledges that "services inflation has continued to moderate, especially on a 12-month basis, despite continued unevenness. This moderation reflects a more balanced labor market". But core goods inflation "has picked up some, recently, and is currently running above the rates that prevailed before the pandemic. Some of these recent movements in goods inflation are likely tariff-related".
- She notes that "most" firms "plan to pass along some – even if not necessarily all – of the tariff costs" (pointing to ISM data - see table below) while the "typical household has the resources to at least partly offset a tariff-induced loss in purchasing power".
- She concludes that "it seems likely that core PCE inflation will be in the vicinity of 3 percent by year’s end, before resuming its decline. Concerning the labor market side of our mandate, tariffs should slow demand and hiring, though not necessarily by a large amount." Overall, "it seems likely that the economy will move away, at least temporarily, from the favorable conditions I have just described. Tariff policy is the main driver, with higher broad-based tariffs than last year likely leading to a rise in inflation, higher unemployment, and slower GDP growth."
- On the labor market not being a significant source of inflationary pressures, "when adjusted for productivity, the pace of [Employment Cost Index] growth has been running around 2 percent recently, which is consistent with the Fed’s 2 percent inflation target. Therefore, even though some indicators show wages still rising somewhat faster than before the pandemic, given recent productivity developments, I do not see wage growth as placing additional pressure on inflation."
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US FISCAL: Available Extraordinary Measures Pick Up Ahead Of Tax Date
Jun-13 20:42
Treasury had $144B in "extraordinary measures" available to keep the government financed as of June 11 per a release Friday. That is up from $84B a week earlier and the highest since April 28.
- However, TGA cash continues to fall, to $309B latest (lowest since early April) Combined with a pullback in Treasury cash ($376B), keeping the total resources available to avert an "x-date" in the summer at around $450B .
- There will be another uptick in Treasury cash in the coming days, and it's likely Treasury allowed some of the extraordinary measures to be rebuilt (ie not exercised) in anticipation of more cash coming in.
- This is likely to be the last major uplift before the summer at which point x-date speculation will pick up if Congress hasn't passed a debt limit increase by then.
FED: Two Cuts Priced This Year Headed Into FOMC Week
Jun-13 20:28
As we head into the June Fed meeting week, market pricing is reflective of the FOMC’s messaging (that we describe in our preview):
- The next cut is only fully priced by the October FOMC meeting, with September seeing a roughly 80% implied probability of bringing the next 25bp reduction.
- Exactly 50bp of cuts are priced through end-2025, implying two Q4 cuts.
- That’s a shift from just after the May meeting, after which the next cut was fully priced by September, and there were closer to three cuts priced for the rest of the year.
- Overall cuts are seen backloaded this year (after 15bp in September, 29bp of cuts priced in Q4 - Oct/Dec combined), but falls off in Q1 (just 21bp cuts priced, 9bp of cuts priced for January and 12bp for March)
FED: Summary Of Economic Projections: Higher 2025 Inflation, Weaker Growth
Jun-13 20:21
The MNI Markets Team’s expectations for the updated Economic Projections are below.
- As of the May meeting, the Federal Reserve staff – whose outlook tends to be broadly shared by the median Committee member – revised their forecasts for growth weaker in 2025 and 2026, “as announced trade policies implied a larger drag on real activity relative to the policies that the staff had assumed in their previous forecast. Trade policies were also expected to lead to slower productivity growth and therefore to reduce potential GDP growth over the next few years. With the drag on demand expected to start earlier and to be larger than the supply response, the output gap was projected to widen significantly over the forecast period. The labor market was expected to weaken substantially, with the unemployment rate forecast moving above the staff's estimate of its natural rate by the end of this year and remaining above the natural rate through 2027."
- On inflation, "The staff's inflation projection was higher than the one prepared for the March meeting. Tariffs were expected to boost inflation markedly this year and to provide a smaller boost in 2026; after that, inflation was projected to decline to 2 percent by 2027."
- Our expectations for these changes fall somewhere in between those projections and the March SEP – a slightly higher unemployment rate, substantially higher inflation in 2025 but to a lesser extent in 2026, and weaker GDP growth this year. Longer-run variables should be unchanged.
MNI Markets Team Expectations For June 2025 Summary Of Economic Projections Medians
