Not to rub it in or otherwise belabor the point, but Kevin Warsh can forget about cutting rates next month.

I’m not sure how Warsh planned to navigate the June FOMC meeting, which Donald Trump continues to insist should result in policy easing. But a trio of hawkish quasi-dissents at the April gathering and a string of upbeat labor market data would rule out a resumption of rate cuts even if there weren’t a war raging. And there is a war raging. On the off chance you haven’t noticed.

Although Tuesday’s CPI release was noisy enough to dismiss as inconclusive, Wednesday’s PPI update admitted of less ambiguity: The war’s exerting upward pressure on prices, even if the details of the wholesale inflation report won’t bias core PCE estimates higher due to methodological nuances.

With that in mind, have a look at the figure below, which shows you the MoM increase for April on an estimate of so-called “trimmed mean” inflation. (Warsh is an advocate of such measures.)

As a reminder (and I’m quoting directly from the Cleveland Fed’s website here) that’s computed as “the weighted average of one-month inflation rates for components whose expenditure weights fall below the 92%ile and above the 8%ile of price changes.” April’s advance from March was the largest sequential increase since January of 2024.

As discussed at some length here, Warsh presumably favors a trimmed mean version of PCE (not CPI). And on a Dallas Fed index, that metric’s undershooting core PCE materially, perhaps arguing for easier policy.

But the problem, as detailed in the linked article, is that historically, trimmed mean PCE is higher than core PCE. And to the extent the trimmed mean CPI index shown above matters, it’s overshot core CPI every month since Trump (re)took office.

Note in the chart that October’s ostensible undershoot for the trimmed mean measure doesn’t really count — the shutdown kept the BLS from computing the CPI series that month, so we don’t really know what those numbers are.

Also worth emphasizing: The trimmed mean metric was much higher from February of 2020 to March of 2021, which would’ve argued against super-aggressive policy easing during the first year of the pandemic.

Looking back on it, that would’ve been the right call, but hindsight’s 20/20 and besides, Warsh (Trump) wants lower rates, so I’m not sure it’s especially relevant in 2026.

The overarching point is that Warsh isn’t likely to have much success if the plan’s to cherry pick metrics that support the policy decisions Trump favors.

He (Warsh, not Trump) would say that’s a strawman. That he’s said no such thing, and that he has no such intentions. After all, Kevin’s no “sock puppet.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Warsh was confirmed by the Senate to replace Jerome Powell at the helm of the Fed, although Powell’s staying on as a governor for a time. The Senate vote was 54-45, marking the narrowest-ever confirmation margin for a Fed chair.