FOMC minutes a yawner but they lay out again the challenge they face

Markets didn’t blink upon the release of the FOMC minutes from their meeting three weeks ago, which came a week before the cool down in the US/China tariff battle, because it revealed nothing new. They are in the dark as much as the rest of us are for both what will be left of the tariffs, after whatever deals will be announced, and what the flow through impact will be on growth and inflation.

They said, “Participants observed that there was considerable uncertainty surrounding the evolution of trade policy as well as about the scale, scope, timing, and persistence of associated economic effects. Significant uncertainties also surrounded changes in fiscal, regulatory, and immigration policies and their economic effects. Taken together, participants saw the uncertainty about their economic outlooks as unusually elevated.”