Minutes from the Fed's July policy meeting revealed policymakers prioritized tariff-driven inflation risks over labor market concerns when keeping interest rates unchanged.

Behind closed doors, officials at the Federal Reserve said much the same as they've said in public: that concerns over tariffs stoking inflation led them to keep the central bank's interest rate flat in July instead of cutting it.

The minutes of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, published on Wednesday, showed that “some [members] noted that it would not be feasible or appropriate to wait for complete clarity on the tariffs’ effects on inflation before adjusting the stance of monetary policy”.

The written account of the Federal Reserve's July meeting, released on Wednesday with a customary three-week lag, suggested officials were divided over when they could be confident that higher import costs wouldn’t lead to a period of broader,

Incomes are still trailing inflation four years after the pandemic-era surge in prices, causing a financial pinch for many households.

South Africa's rand was little moved on Wednesday, despite the country's highest inflation reading for 10 months, as investors awaited minutes from the Fed's July meeting and a symposium later this week that could provide U.

Businesses maintained their inflation expectations at +2.3%, on average, in August vs. July, according to an Atlanta Fed survey released on Wednesday. Sales levels and profit margins "compared to normal" rose last month,

After somewhat positive inflation data in July, the chances of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates in September are at roughly 83%, according to CME Group 's FedWatch tool calculations on Aug. 18. One month earlier, roughly 59% of traders betting on changes in the federal funds rate thought an interest rate cut would occur in September.