U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump's tariff increases would delay progress in bringing down inflation this year, but the Fed's base case is that tariff-related price impacts will be transitory,

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday said President Donald Trump’s tariffs are partly to blame for price increases, leveling the criticism minutes after the central bank announced its decision to hold interest rates steady.

Japan's core inflation hit 3.0% in February and an index stripping away the effect of fuel rose at the fastest pace in nearly a year, a sign of broadening price pressure that reinforces market expectations of further interest rate hikes.

Japan’s consumer inflation slowed slightly in February due to energy subsidies but maintained the uptrend keeping interest-rate hike expectations intact.

It’s too early to say if “the inflationary effects will be transitory, especially given that companies and households still have fresh in their minds the recent history of high unanticipated inflation,” Mohamed El-Erian, the economist who called the Fed too cautious in handling the last inflation surge, wrote on X.