Federal Reserve may slow hikes

An influential Federal Reserve official yesterday said he sees downside risks to his US economic outlook, an assessment that could flag a longer pause before the Fed’s next interest rate hike than he and his colleagues had earlier signalled.

“At this moment, I judge that the balance of risks to my growth and inflation outlooks may be starting to tilt slightly to the downside,” New York Federal Reserve president William Dudley said in remarks at a conference in Hangzhou, China.

Although he said he still expects the US economy to grow about 2% this year, enough to push unemployment down and begin to pull inflation up to the Fed’s 2% target, he added, “on balance, I am somewhat less confident than I was before.”