Press conference exchange between JO LING KENT and Fed Chair Jerome Powell:

user: Thank you. Jo Ling Kent with CBS News. Chair Powell, thanks for taking our questions today. You have consistently said that the Fed does not consider politics in making decisions. With a possible September rate cut on the table, it would be less than two months before the election, and former President Trump reportedly said that cutting rates so close to the election is something the central bank knows “they shouldn’t be doing.” What’s your response, and do you believe it’s possible to really remain apolitical with a September rate cut?

assistant: I absolutely do, and I think it’s—first of all, we haven’t made any decisions. I would say it this way: haven’t made any decision about any future meeting. I don’t know what the data will reveal or how that will affect the appropriate path of our policy. I really don’t know. I do know how we will make that assessment. That’s what I do know. So if you take a step back, the current situation, again, is inflation has come down much closer to our goal, and that’s happened while unemployment has remained low. We’re, we’re very tightly focused on using our tools to try to foster that state of affairs continuing. That’s at each of our meetings and all of our decisions, our focus is strictly on that and really on nothing else—doing our part, whatever that part may be. You know, we’re using our best thinking. We’re doing our best to understand the economy. We, we follow academics. We follow the many commentators who bless us with their commentary, but we don’t change anything in our approach to address other factors, like the political calendar. Congress has, we believe, ordered us to conduct our business in a nonpolitical way at all times, not just some of the time. I’ll say this, too: We never use our tools to support or oppose a political party, a politician, or any political outcome. The bottom line is, if we do our very best to do our part and we stick to our part, that will benefit all Americans. If we get it right, the economy will be stronger. We’ll have price stability. People will find jobs. Wages will rise in real terms. Everyone will benefit. So that’s what we believe, and that’s how we will always act. This is my fourth presidential election at the Fed. I can tell you this is how we think about it. This is what we do. So anything that we do before, during, or after the election will be based on the data, the outlook, and the balance of risks and not on anything else.

user: Just a quick follow-up—do your economic forecasts and models take into account the two very different economic plans of these two presidential candidates, Harris and Trump, and, if so, how?

assistant: No. We do not do that. We absolutely do not do that. We don’t— we don’t know who’s going to win. We don’t know what they’re going to do. We don’t act as though we know, and we just can’t do that, you know? We basically—we have our forecast. We’re not—we can run simulations of different potential policies, but we would never try to make policy decisions based on the outcome of an election that hasn’t happened yet. We would just—that would just be a line we would never cross. You know, we’re a nonpolitical agency. We don’t want to be involved in any—in politics in any way, so we wouldn’t do that.