WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says the U.S. economy is performing well but he’s eyeing potential risks ahead.
Those include a slowdown in global growth, the fading impact from tax cuts and the cumulative weight of the Fed’s own interest rate hikes.
Speaking Wednesday to an audience at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Powell said the Fed is managing interest rates in an effort to prolong the current economic recovery.
He said the increased political attacks on the Fed will not divert the central bank from doing its job.
President Donald Trump has called the Fed’s rate hikes his “biggest threat.”
But Powell told his audience that the Fed has the tools and the protections it needs to serve the public in a “non-partisan, professional way.”
Martin Crutsinger, The Associated Press
