Federal Reserve officials are having a hard time agreeing on what lies ahead for the U.S. economy in a time of unprecedented tariffs, a straining debt ceiling, and political upheaval.
Throughout the spring, the Fed was mostly in agreement there was no rush to cut interest rates. The central bank was content to wait and see how exactly President Donald Trump’s tariff policy would impact the economy. A series of revised forecasts in the aftermath of the tariffs called for lower growth and rising inflation. But the details themselves were still debated: How high would inflation go? How long would it last? Would businesses layoff employees if growth stalls?
Now, three months on from the early-April tariff announcement, Fed officials are starting to formulate their own answers to those questions.
Among the most dovish officials are Fed Board governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, who believe rate cutting should begin as early as this month. In two public appearances on Thursday and Friday, Waller called for rate cuts to start at the Fed’s meeting on July 29-30. Others like John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Susan Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, see a July rate cut as too early because there is still the possibility of further inflation over the course of the year.
These two schools of thought don’t just differ on the timing of rate cuts, but on what is the larger threat to the economy: mass layoffs or soaring inflation. Those in Waller and Bowman’s camp fear middling growth will cause the U.S. to flatline, forcing businesses to cut costs, including by shedding employees. On the other hand, those who favor holding rates believe a cut would only exacerbate the accelerating inflation they see as likely, if not certain.
The prevailing view is that the Fed will keep interest rates steady at its upcoming meeting. The CME FedWatch tool sees a 95% chance of a rate hold at the upcoming meeting.
On Friday in an interview with Bloomberg TV, Waller outlined the case for a rate cut he saw as necessary to push a teetering labor market toward safety. The labor market’s solid headline numbers masked a weakening in the private sector, Waller argued. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report from June outpaced expectations, with the U.S. adding 147,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.1%. An earlier report that specifically tracks the private sector showed it had lost 33,000 jobs in June.
Waller said he wanted the Fed to act now, before the labor market turned for the worse.
“If you’re walking on a lake and the ice is frozen, it sounds safe but when you start hearing cracks—and that’s what I feel like—it’s too late once you go through the ice,” Waller said. “So you’ve got to start prepping in advance before you have that happen.”
Waller’s more hawkish colleagues are wary of cutting rates and loosening monetary policy at a time they believe it should remain restrictive.
Inflation started to creep up in June, according to the Consumer Price Index report released this week. Prices rose 2.7% over the last 12 months, an uptick from 2.4% in May. The most recent CPI also showed early signs tariffs were pushing prices higher. Consumer staples like clothes, toys, and electronics, which are the exact sorts of products that rely heavily on foreign manufacturing, all saw their prices increase.
“For items that are more exposed to higher tariffs…price increases so far this year have been well above what one would expect based on past trends,” Williams said on Wednesday.
Few dispute prices will rise because of tariffs. The split is over whether they will persist or smooth out quickly. Most economists argue any increases are only now starting to show up in the economic data because many companies had stockpiled inventory anticipating the tariffs. Textbook economics would suggest tariffs only lead to a one-time price shock. At the same time, the Trump administration’s goal with its signature tariff policy has been to rewrite the rules of global commerce, making for little historical precedent to guide Fed officials and economists.
Waller preferred to look through the inflation risk.
“With inflation near [the Fed’s 2%] target and the upside risks to inflation limited, we should not wait until the labor market deteriorates before we cut the policy rate,” he said on Thursday.
The Fed’s debates about monetary policy come against a bellicose political backdrop, in which the central bank’s traditional independence is eroding. Earlier this week, there were multiple reports Trump was preparing to fire Fed chair Jerome Powell, with whom he disagrees with for not lowering interest rates. Markets tanked on the news. They then shot back up when Trump denied the report.
Members of the administration are also laying the groundwork for a series of political attacks over the $2.5 billion renovations to the Federal Reserve’s Eccles Building in Washington D.C. Certain White House officials said they believe the cost overruns on the project and Powell’s testimony about some of the building’s planned design features may amount to mismanagement and cause for termination.
The acrimony—albeit one-sided—between the White House and the Fed adds a new dimension to what might otherwise be ordinary internal policy deliberations.
“Comments coming from Fed officials suggest the Federal Open Markets Committee is cleaving, with a vocal side arguing for rate cuts to begin now, and another side (including Jay Powell) still wanting a delay,” Macquarie global rates strategist Thierry Wizman wrote in a note on Friday. “It could evolve into a split along political lines, with one side swayed by political motives, and the need to accommodate fiscal policy, at the expense of adherence to the price-stability mandate.”
But while politicians like Trump have waded into the Fed—once considered taboo—the central banks officials have not crossed the line themselves. Powell declines to answer all questions about Trump or his policies. On Thursday when Waller was asked if he’d spoken to any White House officials about possibly succeeding Powell, he gave a one word answer: “Nope.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doesn’t foresee a sudden spike of AI-related layoffs, but that doesn’t mean the technology won’t drastically change the job market—or even create new roles like robot tailors.
The jobs that will be the most resistant to AI’s creeping effect will be those that consist of more than just routine tasks, Huang said during an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan this week.
“If your job is just to chop vegetables, Cuisinart’s gonna replace you,” Huang said.
On the other hand, some jobs, such as radiologists, may be safe because their role isn’t just about taking scans, but rather interpreting those images to diagnose people.
“The image studying is simply a task in service of diagnosing the disease,” he said.
Huang allowed that some jobs will indeed go away, although he stopped short of using the drastic language from others like Geoffrey Hinton a.k.a. “the Godfather of AI” and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, both of whom have previously predicted massive unemployment thanks to the improvement of AI tools.
Yet, the potential, AI-dominated job market Huang imagines may also add some new jobs, he theorized. This includes the possibility that there will be a newfound demand for technicians to help build and maintain future AI assistants, Huang said, but also other industries that are harder to imagine.
“You’re gonna have robot apparel, so a whole industry of—isn’t that right? Because I want my robot to look different than your robot,” Huang said. “So you’re gonna have a whole apparel industry for robots.”
The idea of AI-powered robots dominating jobs once held by humans may sound like science fiction, and yet some of the world’s most important tech companies are already trying to make it a reality.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made the company’s Optimus robot a central tenet of its future business strategy. Just last month, Musk predicted money will no longer exist in the future and work will be optional within the next 10 to 20 years thanks to a fully fledged robotic workforce.
AI is also advancing so rapidly that it already has the potential to replace millions of jobs. AI can adequately complete work equating to about 12% of U.S. jobs, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report from last month. This represents about 151 million workers representing more than $1 trillion in pay, which is on the hook thanks to potential AI disruption, according to the study.
Even Huang’s potentially new job of AI robot clothesmaker may not last. When asked by Rogan whether robots could eventually make apparel for other robots, Huang replied: “Eventually. And then there’ll be something else.”
After two decades of climbing the corporate ladder at companies ranging from ABC, ESPN, and Charter Communications (commonly known as Spectrum), Timm Chiusano quit it all to become a content creator.
He wasn’t just walking away from high titles, but a high salary, too. In his peak years, Chiusano made $600,000 to $800,000 annually. But in June of 2024, after giving a 12-week notice, he “responsibility fired himself” from his corporate job as VP of production and creative services at Charter.
He did it all to help others navigate the challenges of a workplace, and appreciate the most mundane parts of life on TikTok.
most people are posting their 2024 recaps; these are a few of my favorite moments from the year that was, but i need to start reintroducing myself too i dont have a college degree, no one in my life knew that until i was 35 when i eventually got my foot in the door in my early 20’s after a few years of substitute teaching and part time jobs, i thought for sure i had found the career path of my dreams in live sports production i didn’t think i had a chance of surviving that first college football season but i busted my ass, stuck around and got promoted 5 times in 5 years then i met a girl in Las Vegas, got married in 7 months, and freaked out about my career that had me travelling 36 weeks a year i had to find a more stable “desk job”, i was scared shitless that i was pigeonholed and the travel would eventually destroy my marriage i crafted a narative for espn arguing they needed me on their marketing team because of my unique perspective coming from the production side i got rejected, but kept trying and a year i got that job the 7 years with espn were incredible, but also exhausting and raised all kinds of questions about corporate america, toxic situations, and capitalism in general why was i borderline heart attack stressed so often when i could see that my ideas were literally generating 2,000 times the money that i was getting paid? in 2012 i had a kid and in 2013 i got the biggest job of my career to reinvent how to produce 20,000 commercials a year for small business it took 12 rounds of interviews, a drug test i somehow passed, and a background check that finally made me tell my wife of 8 years that i didnt have a college degree they brought me in the thursday before my first day and told me what i told grace in that clip the next decade was an insane blur; i saw everything one would ever see in their career from the perspective of an executive at a fortune 100 i started making tiktoks, kinda blacked out at some point in 2019 and responsibly fired myself in 2024 to see what i might be capable of on my own with all the skills i picked up along my career journey now the mission is pay what i know forward, and see if i can become the mr rogers of corporate america cc: @grace beverley @Ryan Holiday @Subway Oracle
What started as short-video vlogs on just about anything in 2020 (reviews on protein bars, sushi, and sneakers) later transitioned to videos on growing up, and dealing with life’s challenges, like coming to terms when you have a toxic boss. Today, his platform on TikTok has over 1 million followers.
With the help of going viral from his “loop” format where videos end and seamlessly circle back to the beginning, he began making more videos as a side-hustle on top of his day-to-day tasks in the office.
“How can I get people to be smarter and more comfortable about their careers in ways that are gonna help on a day-to-day basis?” Chiusano told Fortune.
Today, he could go by many titles: former vice president at a Fortune 100 company, motivational speaker, dad, content creator, or as he labels himself, the Mister Rogers of Corporate America.
Just as the late public television icon helped kids navigate the complexities of childhood, Chiusano wants to help young adults think about how to approach their careers and their potential to make an impact.
“Mister Rogers is the greatest of all time in his space. I will never get to that level of impact. But it’s an easy way to describe what I’m trying to do, and it consistently gives me a goal to strive for,” he said. “There are some parallels here with the quirkiness.”
Firing himself after 25 years in the corporate world
Even with years in corporate, Chiusano doesn’t resemble the look of a typical buttoned-up executive. Today, he has more of a relaxed Brooklyn dad attire, with a sleeve of tattoos and a confidence to blend in with any trendy middle aged man in Soho. During our interview, he showed off one of the first tattoos he got: two businessmen shaking hands, a reference to Radiohead’s OK Computer album.
“This is a dope ass Monday in your 40s,” began one of his videos.
It consisted of Chiusano doing everyday things such as eating leftovers, going to the gym, training for the NYC marathon, taking out the trash, dropping his daughter off at school, a rehearsal for a Ted Talk, eating lunch with his wife, and brand deal meetings. Though the content sounds pretty normal, that’s the point.
“The reason why I fired myself in the first place was to be here,” he says in the video while picking his daughter up from school.
Today, Chiusano spends his days making content on navigating workplace culture, public speaking, brand deals, brand partnerships, executive coaching, writing a book, and the most important job: being a dad to his 13-year-old daughter Evelyn.
“I’m basically flat [in salary] to where I was, and this is everything I could ever want in the world,” he said. “The ability to send my kid to the school she’s been going to, eat sushi takeout almost as much as I’d like, and do nice things for my wife.”
In fact, when sitting inside one of his favorite New York City spots, Lure Fishbar, he keeps getting stopped by regulars who know him by name. He points out that one of his favorite interviews he filmed here was with legendary filmmaker Ken Burns.
Advice to Gen Z
In a time where Gen Z has been steering to more unconventional paths, like content creation or skill trades rather than just a 9-to-5 office job, Chiusano opens up a lens to what life looks like when deciding to be present rather than always looking for what’s next—a mistake he said he made in his 20s.
Instead, he wants to teach the younger generation to build skills for as long as you can, but “if you are unhappy, that’s a very different conversation.”
“I think some people will make themselves more unhappy because they feel like that’s what’s expected of a situation,” he said.
“I would love to be able to empower your generation more, to be like somebody’s gonna have to be the head of HR at that super random company to put cool standards and practices in place for better work-life balance for the employees.”
For Mark Zuckerberg, the most significant creation from his two years at Harvard University wasn’t the precursor to a global social network, but a prank website that nearly got him expelled.
The Meta CEO said in a 2017 commencement address at his alma mater that the controversial site, Facemash, was “the most important thing I built in my time here” for one simple reason: it led him to his wife, Priscilla Chan.
“Without Facemash I wouldn’t have met Priscilla, and she’s the most important person in my life,” Zuckerberg said during the speech.
In 2003, Zuckerberg, then a sophomore, created Facemash by hacking into Harvard’s online student directories and using the photos to create a site where users could rank students’ attractiveness. The site went viral, but it was quickly shut down by the university. Zuckerberg was called before Harvard’s Administrative Board, facing accusations of breaching security, violating copyrights, and infringing on individual privacy.
“Everyone thought I was going to get kicked out,” Zuckerberg recalled in his speech. “My parents came to help me pack. My friends threw me a going-away party.”
It was at this party, thrown by friends who believed his expulsion was imminent, where he met Chan, another Harvard undergraduate. “We met in line for the bathroom in the Pfoho Belltower, and in what must be one of the all time romantic lines, I said: ‘I’m going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly,’” Zuckerberg said.
Chan, who described her now-husband to The New Yorker as “this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there,” went on the date with him. Zuckerberg did not get expelled from Harvard after all, but he did famously drop out the following year to focus on building Facebook.
While the 2010 film The Social Network portrayed Facemash as a critical stepping stone to the creation of Facebook, Zuckerberg himself has downplayed its technical or conceptual importance.
“And, you know, that movie made it seem like Facemash was so important to creating Facebook. It wasn’t,” he said during his commencement speech. But he did confirm that the series of events it set in motion—the administrative hearing, the “going-away” party, the line for the bathroom—ultimately connected him with the mother of his three children.
Chan, for her part, went on to graduate from Harvard in 2007, taught science, and then attended medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, becoming a pediatrician.
She and Zuckerberg got married in 2012, and in 2015, they co-founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization focused on leveraging technology to address major world challenges in health, education, and science. Chan serves as co-CEO of the initiative, which has pledged to give away 99% of the couple’s shares in Meta Platforms to fund its work.
You can watch the entirety of Zuckerberg’s Harvard commencement speech below:
For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
Politics8 years ago