In my macro preview for this week, I suggested Jerome Powell might be facing a mutiny at the Fed.

He’d say that’s preposterous. He might point to the dot plot, which suggests more officials agree with the gist of his “patient” approach to policy than disagree. But I view it as remarkable that both Chris Waller and Miki Bowman came out publicly in favor of a July rate cut so quickly after the June meeting.

Waller and Bowman are somebodies at the Fed. When they openly tip their policy preferences, particularly their preference for the outcome of a specific meeting, it’s news. Or it should be, anyway. And if I were Powell and I wasn’t planning to cut in July, I’d be more than a little perturbed at Waller and Bowman for so publicly suggesting a cut’s the right move.

It’s clear, I think, that at least some Fed officials view the discrepancy between the realized inflation data (which has been generally benign for several months now) and Powell’s relatively hawkish bent, to be increasingly untenable in the face of withering criticism from Donald Trump.

Of course, no one at the Fed’s going to admit publicly that Trump’s incessant bullying has any influence on policy outcomes, but it’s fair to ask if some officials are beginning to suspect that Powell’s refusal to deviate from the “wait-and-see” messaging is, perhaps subconsciously, a function of his desire to act as a bulwark against executive encroachment.

To be sure, you want that from a Fed Chair. You want someone determined to hold firm in the face of pressure from The White House. But what happens in the event defending the institution’s independence begins to run at cross purposes with, say, preempting a slowdown?

Powell talks often in 2025 about the risk that the Committee’s employment and price stability goals could find themselves “in tension” if trade policy pushes up inflation and drags on growth. I’d posit another sort of tension: Between the imperative of keeping policy independent and pursuing the dual mandate.

The Powell Fed’s clinging to the idea that tariff-related inflation will eventually show up. Yes, the labor market’s ok right now, but even Powell admitted last week during two days of congressional testimony that the Fed would’ve likely cut rates again by now were it not for higher core inflation projections in the SEP.

Ostensibly, that excuse still works. Better than ever, even, give that the median core PCE forecast moved up to 3.1% in the June SEP. But the data isn’t cooperating, which is to say it’s more or less bereft when it comes to inflation pressures of the sort that might drive price growth back to uncomfortable levels.

Meanwhile, the growth slowdown’s starting to manifest in the hard data, as evidenced last week in a sharp revision to the personal consumption component in the final read on Q1 GDP and a lackluster showing for real personal spending in the PCE release covering May.

The figure above, from BMO’s Ian Lyngen, gives you a sense of the extent to which growth expectations are now detached entirely from Fed pricing.

That’s a pretty yawning discrepancy, and it’s the sort of thing someone might point to in suggesting, however begrudgingly, that Trump may have a point.

That’s the frustrating thing about Trump: Sometimes, he does have a point. This is just one example. Another — and some readers aren’t going to like this, but I’ll say it anyway — is birthright citizenship. It might be cruel to suggest adopting stricter rules for automatic US citizenship, but it’s not crazy. Do I support Trump’s stance on that particular issue? No. Not really. But, again, it’s a debate worth having.

The debate over the near-term path of monetary policy in America is, I think, an example of Trump having the right idea but being the wrong messenger. It’s probably time for the Fed to start cutting rates again, albeit gradually.

But Powell will be forgiven for holding out until the last minute. Because anything short of that will look like a fold to Trump’s social media feed. And that’s a terrifying prospect when the stakes are as high as the integrity of the world’s reserve currency.