Minneapolis Federal Reserve president declines to say how many more interest rate hikes remain

The president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve said Sunday he is not sure how many more federal interest rate hikes will remain.

“Well, we’re not sure yet,” Neel Kashkari told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” “We need to get inflation all the way back down to 2 percent.”

Kashkari said that while the current inflation rate of 3 percent “is really positive news,” that number “tends to move around a lot” due to fluctuating oil, gas and food prices. He said that the country is making “good progress” toward bringing inflation down, but declined to say whether the progress is enough for fewer interest rate hikes.

“So, we’re making good progress,” he said. “But it’s still double our 2 percent rate. And so we don’t want to declare victory. We’re making good progress, and we’re staying on it. If we need to hike — raise rates further from here, we will do so. But we’re gonna let the data guide us and not prejudge the outcome.”

Inflation slowed to 3 percent in June, hitting its lowest rate in two years. The Fed hiked its baseline interest rate range by 0.25 percent to a span of 5.25 to 5.5 percent last week, pushing interest rates to a 22-year high.

The Fed is slated to meet again in September to gauge if another hike is needed, Kashkari said.

“September and beyond, you know, we may or may not raise in September, but we also will continue to watch all the data, the inflation data, the wage data, as well as the unemployment data to make those assessments,” he told Brennan.