One day after the Federal Reserve Board announced its long-awaited cut in interest rates, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declared during an interview this morning at The Atlantic Festival that the economy has reached a “soft landing” of low inflation and steady job growth.
“When we spoke two years ago, what I said was, I believed that there was a path to bring inflation down in the context of a strong job market,” she told me, referring to her previous appearance at the festival, in 2022. “And if the Fed and the administration’s policies could succeed in accomplishing that, we’d call that a soft landing. And I believe that’s exactly what we’re seeing in the economy.”
Without commenting on specific proposals by the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, Yellen also argued that sweeping tariffs on foreign goods and the mass deportation of undocumented migrant workers—two ideas that Trump has insisted would be priorities of a second White House term—could …