No one knows how Tuesday’s presidential election will turn out, but the Federal Reserve’s move two days later is much easier to predict: With inflation continuing to cool, the Fed is set to cut interest rates for a second time this year. The Fed’s future actions, though, will become more unsettled once a new president and Congress take office in January, particularly if Donald Trump were to win the White House again. Trump’s proposals to impose high tariffs on all imports and launch mass deportations of unauthorized immigrants and his threat to intrude on the Fed’s normally independent rate decisions could send inflation surging, economists have said.
