While there's uncertainty¹ about global trade policy, monetary² policy effects and others, the U.S. economy could achieve a soft landing in 2020, a senior U.S. Federal Reserve official said Tuesday.

 

美联储一位高级官员周二表示，尽管全球经济政策、货币政策效应以及其它因素存在不确定性，2020年美国经济可能实现软着陆。

 

"The current baseline outlook for 2020 suggests a reasonable chance that a soft landing will be achieved," Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said in remarks to the CFA Society in St. Louis.

 

Bullard noted³ that the Fed was cognizant of the slowing U.S. economy in 2019 and it had provided more accommodation to the economy by dramatically altering the path of monetary policy.

 

After four rate hikes in 2018, the Fed lowered interest rates three times in 2019, cutting the target range of the federal funds rate by 75 basis points to 1.5-1.75 percent.

 

Bullard noted that the size of this turnaround in U.S. monetary policy has been much larger than those rate reductions alone would suggest, given that the expectation as of late 2018 was that the Fed would actually raise rates further, not lower rates, in 2019.

 

"The bottom line is that U.S. monetary policy is considerably⁴ more accommodative today than it was as of late 2018," he said.

 

The Fed official cautioned there are three factors that could affect a soft landing of the U.S. economy. "One question for 2020 is whether global trade policy uncertainty has sufficiently⁵ been dampened to now encourage global manufacturing," he said.

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