Fed's Kaplan says too soon to change forecasts to reflect tariff impact

Anything that would hurt U.S. relationships with trading partners such as Mexico and Canada would be against the interest of the United States, a U.S. central banker said on Tuesday.

“My sensitivity would be, any actions we could take as a country to jeopardize those relationships are not in our interest,” Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan said in Houston, even as he declined to directly comment on President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

Asked if he would change his forecast to reflect any expected impact from the tariffs, Kaplan said no.

“It’s still too soon to say what policies are going to be implemented - my job is not to analyse or overly comment on hypotheticals,” he said.