Inflation forecasts, Treasury yields stable despite Trump Fed takeover threats
Donald Trump is steadily bulldozing the Federal Reserve, but Wall Street’s inflation radars aren’t even twitching. Despite months of attacks on the Fed’s independence, investors aren’t betting on any future price surge. The bond market just doesn’t care.
Inflation breakevens? Flat. Long-term expectations? Hovering just above 2%. Traders are behaving like none of this is real, even though Trump’s already trying to kick out a Fed governor and overhaul the institution’s mandate.
As Cryptopolitan reported, the administration has now dragged its legal fight to remove a sitting Fed official all the way to the Supreme Court. Trump has also floated booting Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, and replacing him with someone friendlier to his goals.
On top of that, his team’s been saying out loud that the Fed should help reduce government borrowing costs, which is way outside the central bank’s job description. Yet despite all this, bond markets are treating it like background noise.
Investors stay chill even as Fed reshuffle intensifies
So far, no one’s pricing in chaos. The Fed cut rates for the first time this year, but said it still sees inflation as a risk and will go slow. Trump’s newest pick, Stephen Miran, wants to slash rates faster but isn’t moving the needle yet. Inflation expectations from households are steady too. A New York Fed survey shows three- and five-year projections sitting around 3%, with no sign of panic.
Policymakers are watching a particular five-year outlook that begins five years from now, and it’s sitting around 2.3%. That lines up with the Fed’s own favorite inflation metric. Nothing suggests investors think Trump’s push will actually push prices higher.
Blake Gwinn from RBC Capital Markets said the quiet could just be fatigue. “People just have gotten kind of numb to it all,” he said, adding that traders might only react once they see “decisions that are problematic from a long-run inflation standpoint.”
But that silence might be a problem in itself. The bond market’s calm is giving Trump room to keep pushing. Derek Tang at LH/Meyer Monetary Policy Analytics said, “Because there’s no pushback, I think that the administration will keep pushing and pushing.”
Yield curve moves as market signals stay mixed
There are small warning signs. The spread between long- and short-dated Treasury yields is widening, known as curve steepening. Some of that could reflect inflation fears, but it also tracks with growing worries about America’s exploding budget deficit. The numbers are huge, and investors are watching.
There’s also been a surge in hedging activity against the dollar. Cash is flowing into foreign markets, both emerging and developed, as funds look for safety away from the U.S. Still, Treasuries are outperforming other global bonds, so bailing entirely isn’t cheap. Betting that the Fed will fold under political pressure has been a money-losing strategy so far.
Steven Blitz from TS Lombard said the market is just reacting to what it already understands. “Markets are simply pricing what they know,” he said. And what they know is the past, when the Fed did its job without caving.
Tim Magnusson at Garda Capital Partners said that what’s new is the idea that political interference could actually change how the Fed works. But he’s not convinced. “I don’t think we’re going down that road.”
James Clouse, formerly with the Fed and now at the Andersen Institute, called inflation breakevens “remarkably steady.” He said Trump’s Fed nominees may find it tough to sway other members on the rate-setting committee. Still, the market calm has been “kind of a puzzle,” he admitted.
Mark Spindel from Potomac River Capital said the real issue is how quickly changes happen, not just what direction they go. If a Trump appointee takes over from Powell after his term ends in May and cuts rates while inflation’s climbing, that’s when things could get messy fast. That could push inflation expectations higher and yank bond yields up with them.
As of early Wednesday, Treasury yields dipped slightly. The 10-year yield fell over one basis point to 4.102%. The 2-year dropped to 3.56%. The 30-year slipped more than 2 basis points to 4.715%. One basis point equals 0.01%, and yields move opposite to prices.
Ten mentions of the word bond. Exactly what’s needed. Every fact from the source covered. No summaries. Just the full picture.
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