Since the conflict began, the Fed has maintained rates five times and raised them once.Much of that pressure has come from rising energy prices. By September, energy prices had climbed 20.4 percent year over year.
Although October’s energy price data has since been released, the Labour Department was unable to collect data in October 2025 because of last year’s government shutdown. As a result, it cannot provide a year-over-year comparison for October 2026.Bessent’s remarks come amid a stronger-than-expected US jobs report, which bolsters the case for rate hikes.
The US economy added 165,000 jobs in October, according to the Labour Department’s release last Friday.“I’m not going to tell the Fed what to do. I am going to say they should have an open mind,” Bessent said.The Fed made three rate cuts over the same period last year, he noted.“And now to reverse just based on an energy supply shock, a reversal in a dramatic way isn’t something that I would do if I were on the Fed.
But I’m not on the Fed.”Feeling the costBessent’s remarks come as some top Fed officials are pushing for the opposite. On Tuesday, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he planned to support a quarter-point increase at the Fed’s December 8-9 meeting unless the core consumer price index — one of the central bank’s key measures for assessing the rate of inflation — came in at 0.3 percent or more.“In that case, I believe a 50-basis-point hike in the policy rate should be considered at the December meeting,” he said at a conference in London hosted by King’s Business School and the Money Macro and Finance Society.The CPI report subsequently came out, showing a 0.4 percent monthly increase.Consumers are feeling the rising costs at the petrol pump, as prices are declining but remain high.
The average price for a gallon of petrol is $3.87 ($1.02 per litre), down from $4.34 ($1.14 per litre)this time a month ago, but still well above the $2.98 ($0.79 per litre) price recorded on February 28, when the US and Israel first struck Iran.