The word “uncertainty” came up 17 times in the May FOMC minutes, released on Wednesday into the pre-Nvidia lull.

The account of the May Fed gathering was too stale to matter, just like everything else that didn’t happen five minutes ago in a world beholden to a pathologically mercurial US president.

That said, an assessment which judges the macro outlook to be hopelessly indeterminate (and that describes this set of meeting minutes) is just as true now as it was when the Committee last convened. Uncertainty’s the only constant.

As discussed briefly in this week’s macro preview, the minutes reflected policymakers’ concerns about potential “tension” between the Committee’s goals in a stagflationary environment. “Participants noted that the Committee might face difficult tradeoffs if inflation proves to be more persistent while the outlooks for growth and employment weaken,” the account of the proceedings read.

Somewhat amusingly, there was an allusion to the possibility that the sheer quantum of uncertainty created by the Trump White House might cool the economy enough to offset any upward pressure on prices from the tariffs. As the minutes put it, “higher uncertainty could restrain business and consumer demand and inflationary pressures could be damped if downside risks to economic activity or the labor market materialized.”

I suppose a Trump apologist might claim that’s more evidence of “3D chess.” Trump’s going to scare everyone to death in order to blunt, through the demand channel, the inflationary read-across of an engineered negative supply shock. (Not just genius, stable genius. Not just stable genius, very stable genius.)

There was also some discussion about the potentially perilous interplay between consumer PTSD from the COVID/Ukraine inflation shock and price increases from tariffs. Specifically, “some” Fed officials said inflation expectations “might be particularly sensitive because inflation had been above the Committee’s target for an extended period.” At least they’re cognizant. “Some” of them, anyway.

I realize I’m a broken record on this by now, but the explosive upside prints on the University of Michigan inflation expectations series are cause for concern.

As the figure above reminds you, these last several readouts are among the worst ever, and they’re unprecedented in the “Great Moderation” era. (I suppose that’s just more evidence “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”)

Whatever the case, “almost all participants” at the May FOMC meeting said it’s possible tariff-related inflation “could prove to be more persistent than expected,” and that it’ll be important to monitor sundry expectations metrics to guard against that outcome.

Not surprisingly, the account of the meeting suggested the Fed’s content, for now, to write off the Q1 GDP contraction to trade distortions — “measurement difficulties,” as the minutes put it.

There was no indication — none whatsoever — that Jerome Powell’s prepared to acquiesce to Trump’s calls for rate cuts in the near-term. Policy’s “well positioned to wait for more clarity,” the minutes said. It’s “appropriate to take a cautious approach until the net economic effects of the array of changes to government policies become clearer.”

Now cue the counter-narrative crowd (which includes far too many professional bank “strategists”) to explain why the Fed’s dry, snoozer of an assessment somehow constitutes an anti-Trump conspiracy or is otherwise a flagrant attempt on Powell’s part to politicize US monetary policy.