'IT'S NOT NORMAL'

ECONOMY

Three months ago, Tom Barkin saw gasoline prices were coming down and the effects of tariffs subsiding.

Three months later, "it didn't seem to have lasted," said Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and a member of the Federal Reserve Board committee that adjusts interest rates to either stimulate the United States economy or slow down inflation.

"You have to ask yourself, how much patience do you have for these quote-unquote temporary factors to normalize?" he said in remarks to the press after an appearance Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

The answer is not much, as the Federal Reserve Board raised the overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point last week, with markets expecting another hike by the end of the year to try to curb inflation. It was the first time in three years that the Fed had raised its benchmark interest rate — now ranging from 3.75% to 4% — as inflation has refused to abate with the Iran war driving up oil prices and U.S. tariff policies putting pressure on consumer goods. Barkin is hopeful about the U.S. economy, with artificial intelligence driving an investment boom and the job market stable.

But he acknowledges that companies still aren't hiring many employees — especially recent college graduates with technology degrees — and inflation remains too far above the Fed's target of 2% annual growth.

"Where we are today is a reasonable equilibrium; it's not a normal equilibrium," he said during a nearly hourlong public discussion with Barbara Humpton, chief executive officer of a rare earth minerals company and a member of the Richmond Fed's board.

Virginia's economy also has been sending mixed signals. Inflation is up, mostly because of fuel prices and tariff costs, but consumers are spending, and state revenues, including sales tax collections, are ahead of forecast.

The state picked up jobs last month and unemployment dipped, but the labor participation rate hit a record low, as Baby Boomers retire and federal immigration policy reduces the flow of foreign workers.

Data centers and AI investment drive the state's economic growth, but they face a massive public backlash and political headwinds in Richmond.

For Barkin, who has been giving speeches around the region since the Fed action on interest rates last week, the current "problem child" is inflation, not employment.

The Fed targets inflation to increase by about 2% a year, but it increased by 3.4% in August on an annual basis, according to the Consumer Price Index. The Personal Consumer Expenditures Index, the Fed's tool for measuring inflation, rose by 3.7% in July — 3.3% after excluding the cost of fuel and food.

But consumers need both fuel and food, and those costs continue to go up, partly because of the effects of the war that the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran on Feb. 28 and partly because of higher tariffs that President Donald Trump has imposed on goods from major trading partners, including Canada, which is the largest market for Virginia exports.

Diesel fuel is a pressing example of the cost of foreign wars on the U.S. economy and consumers. The average diesel price set record highs for 17 consecutive days before subsiding slightly on Wednesday and settling just below $6.38 a gallon on Thursday.

The causes include higher oil prices because of the war's effect on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and other trade routes for Middle Eastern petroleum products, as well as the effects of Ukrainian bombing of oil refineries in Russia. The previous record high for diesel fuel in Virginia was in June 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine and the global economy was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The effects are not only the cost of diesel at the pump in Virginia, but also the ripple effect on prices for other goods, which are hauled primarily by trucks that run on diesel, as most of the world's economy does.

"As with any transportation cost, it's more than just transportation," Barkin said after his appearance on Thursday. "It's an input to a whole range of costs."

Higher fuel costs, like the additional expense for tariffs imposed on goods imported into the U.S., show up in higher prices for consumers, although companies have to choose whether they can afford to pass on the additional expense without losing business. When Barkin became president of the Richmond Fed in 2018, he said companies were grappling with the question of whether to pass costs to consumers from higher tariffs that Trump imposed during his first term as president.

Then, he said, companies generally concluded that they couldn't risk passing on those costs, but four years later, after a partial economic shutdown during the pandemic, they felt free to raise prices to meet pent-up consumer demand.

Now, Barkin told reporters that companies are confident they can get higher prices from other businesses or wealthy customers, but when they sell to "low, moderate income consumers, they are much less confident, much less likely to get the price."

Michael Martz (804) 649-6964 mmartz@timesdispatch.com

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