More Fed Officials Lost Patience About Elevated Inflation at Latest Meeting

An increasing number of officials at the Federal Reserve are growing impatient about the lack of progress in getting inflation under control, leading several policymakers to support raising interest rates in July, according to minutes from last month’s gathering.

Policymakers voted 9 to 3 in favor of holding rates steady at a range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent at the end of last month. It was the first time since 2016 that three officials on the Federal Open Market Committee dissented in the same direction regarding a policy change.

The discussion at the latest meeting, a record of which was released on Wednesday, centered on inflation, which has overshot the Fed’s 2 percent target for five years. Fresh price pressures stemming from the war with Iran, surging investments tied to the artificial intelligence boom and President Trump’s tariffs have pushed it even further out of reach.

Several participants at the meeting supported higher rates, the minutes said, given their view that “price pressures appeared broad based” and that the Fed’s current policy settings were not helping to tame inflation. Of that cohort, a few specified that raising rates in July would “likely help forestall the need for a steeper and potentially more costly sequence of tightening moves at a later stage.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/business/federal-reserve-interest-rates.html