Trump’s tariffs put Fed Chair Powell in a ‘no-win situation’

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is facing an increasingly dreadful task.

Economists, business owners and investors are betting that the uncertainty created by the sudden rollout of President Trump’s large tariff hikes, many of which are set to take effect Wednesday, will push the economy closer to a recession by weakening hiring and spending. That would call for cutting rates to cushion any downturn.

At the same time, the magnitude of tariff increases is likely to lead prices to rise substantially for many imported goods, including materials used by domestic manufacturers. That could make central bankers nervous about inflation and argues for keeping rates where they are despite gathering risks to the economy and labor market.

“They are in a no-win situation,” said Laurence Meyer, a former Fed governor.

Congress has charged the Fed with keeping inflation low and stable while maintaining a healthy labor market. It has been at least 40 years since a president’s policies thrust the Fed’s two mandates into such profound potential tension.

“This administration has generated the worst shock possible for the Fed, and there’s nothing that they can do right now,” said Riccardo Trezzi, a former Fed economist who runs Geneva-based Underlying Inflation, a consulting firm.

Shoppers heading into a Nike store in King of Prussia, Pa., earlier this month.

Powell said last week that the central bank didn’t “need to be in a hurry” to cut rates, indicating a rate cut isn’t on the table at the Fed’s next policy meeting, which is May 6-7. “You’ll know more…as the months go by. It’s hard to say exactly when you’ll know, but clearly that learning process is ongoing,” he said.

For now, investors are betting the Fed cuts interest rates later this year because the negative hit to growth will so badly weaken companies’ pricing power that inflation will slow after a big initial pop.

But the Fed will be hard-pressed to cut rates to pre-empt that slowdown because if it succeeds in offsetting the weakness, the increase in inflation might last longer. Fed officials have suggested that they could be slower to cut rates than they have in previous episodes until they see the labor market weakening meaningfully.

“If you’re a trapeze artist, you don’t leave the platform until you’re sure your partner is leaving the platform,” said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at BNY Investments.

Waiting to see the economy weaken and joblessness rise before cutting rates will be politically hard, particularly because Trump has already called on Powell to cut interest rates. “It’s very difficult for the Fed to explain to the public” why it has to wait, said Meyer.

Officials pay particularly close attention to what consumers, investors and businesses expect to happen to inflation over the next several years because they believe those expectations can be self-fulfilling.

In some ways, the Fed’s problem resembles that of a soccer goalie who must decide whether to dive to the left and focus on inflation or to the right and address weaker growth as an opponent takes a penalty kick.

“Maybe they will get lucky, and they choose one of the two sides of the mandate, and ex post it will turn out they did the right thing,” said Trezzi.

Elias Sabo, chief executive officer of Compass Diversified Holdings, an owner of middle-market businesses, has been telling his portfolio companies to brace for a sharp reduction in sales from the uncertainty caused by tariffs and the price increases he expects to have to pass through to customers.

“We’re instructing CEOs to reduce costs, freeze hiring—and that portends bad things for the economy regardless of the tariff impact,” said Sabo, whose brands include the food-heating-system maker Sterno, and Primaloft, which makes performance synthetic insulation in consumer apparel.

While spending by low-income consumers has been squeezed by inflation over the past several years, high-income consumers have continued to spend generously owing in part to the wealth effects of lofty stock prices. A sustained downturn could lead them to sit tight.

Adding to the concern is a sense of bewilderment over the administration’s trade goals—whether the ultimate objective is to negotiate deals that end up removing or lowering tariffs, which could reduce the incentive to bring production back to the U.S., or to keep higher tariffs in place to reshore domestic production.

Meanwhile, if some of the tariffs stick and succeed in bringing production back to the U.S., inflation could be more persistent.

The pandemic showed that even one-time increases in goods prices can last much longer than anticipated. One lesson: It can take longer for prices of services to adjust higher following a shock to goods prices, Reinhart said. A big run-up in car prices in 2021 and 2022, for example, helped lead to subsequent increases in car-insurance prices.

Jumps in car prices in recent years helped lead to subsequent increases in car-insurance prices.

In addition, companies are likely to spread the cost of price increases for items subject to tariffs across the broader range of goods or services that they sell, further complicating Fed officials’ decisions.

“Of course they do see the recession risks, but inflation risk at this point is nonnegligible for them. It’s really, really big, honestly,” said Trezzi.

Central bankers face a final challenge: Rate cuts right now wouldn’t be able to address the main source of uncertainty buffeting businesses. By contrast, the Fed cut rates by 1 percentage point, or 100 basis points, between September and December last year to address concerns that overly restrictive monetary policy might weaken the labor market.

“Getting 50 to 100 basis points of interest-rate relief right now against the background of this uncertainty, that’s not going to move the needle,” said Sabo.

Monetary policy might also be impotent in addressing broader concerns surfaced by Trump’s trade war, including that it could easily morph into a capital war and ultimately a loss of American economic primacy.

Yields on the 10-year Treasury note were up nearly 0.27 percentage point this week, to 4.259% on Tuesday—a reversal of typical “flight to safety” dynamics that occur when risks of a global slowdown mount. Treasurys have long been seen as the ultimate haven asset.

Analysts have cited a range of reasons for the selloff in Treasurys, including fears of tariff-induced inflation that prevent the Fed from cutting aggressively and a global retreat from exposure to American assets. The selloff in longer-dated securities and equities is “deeply concerning,” said Trezzi.

Rate cuts also tend to work by stimulating demand for rate-sensitive sectors of the economy, such as housing and cars. But those sectors are also two that could be heavily affected by tariffs, raising the risk that a few interest-rate cuts might do little to cushion the economy against a tariff-induced slowdown.

The Fed’s stimulus operates through financial markets into interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy, “which is hard if those markets are disrupted,” said Reinhart, a former senior Fed economist. “It’s only helpful to the extent that you think you can turn expectations, and expectations really aren’t about a quarter-point here or a quarter-point there.”

Write to Nick Timiraos at Nick.Timiraos@wsj.com