Chicago Fed Pres.: Opining on Tariffs Isn’t Our Job, But They Raise Prices, I’ll Never Say Anything Good About Them

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Austan Goolsbee stated that the Federal Reserve isn’t going to weigh in on tariffs, but “you’re never going to hear me say good things about tariffs. If they serve a purpose, a negotiating purpose, all power to it. At the end of the day, tariffs are going to increase prices.”

Goolsbee responded to a question on tariffs by stating [relevant remarks begin around 33:55] “Again, we’re in the space of fiscal policy, so the Fed is not going to weigh — if Congress or the president want to put in tariffs, I’m an economist, you’re never going to hear me say good things about tariffs. If they serve a purpose, a negotiating purpose, all power to it. At the end of the day, tariffs are going to increase prices. And, whether it’s Canada or whether it’s uncertainty in Korea, the modern supply chain is — there are a lot of steps to it. And we just went through a period where supply chain problems and supply-side damage [were] fundamental to at least a lot of the increase in inflation. So, let’s just hope that we don’t get in a circumstance where inflation gets rising again, because then the Fed’s got to deal with it.”

Earlier, he stated that the Federal Reserve isn’t in the business of fiscal policy and that the leaders within the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are “also talking about things that they’re arguing would increase the productivity growth rate. If you could increase the productivity growth rate, that would be a huge positive. You could grow faster without inflation. So, I think everybody wants them to succeed at doing that part of the equation.”

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