← Videos · Economy, Tariffs & Trade

Warsh Holds Rates Steady at the October FOMC Press Conference, Oct. 28, 2026

October 28, 2026 · Federal Reserve · 0:34:17

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Chair Kevin Warsh announced on October 28, 2026, that the Federal Open Market Committee had voted 10–2 to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 3.75 to 4.00 percent — leaving in place the level set by September’s increase — according to the FOMC statement. The statement described economic activity as “expanding at a strong pace,” said domestic spending had been resilient, productivity growth strong, and capital investment robust, and said job gains had kept pace with the workforce while the unemployment rate had changed little. On prices, the statement was blunt: “Inflation remains elevated.”

The Committee’s stated reason for waiting was information, not satisfaction: “The accumulation of more information will help the Committee determine the policy stance appropriate to ensure a timely return of inflation to the Committee’s 2 percent goal. The Committee will deliver price stability.” The two dissents came from the hawkish side: Lisa D. Cook and Beth M. Hammack voted against the action because they preferred to raise the target range by a further quarter percentage point at this meeting, according to the statement.

At the press conference that followed, Warsh said politics had played no part in the decision. “Politics played no role in the decision,” he told reporters, as reported in USA Today’s live coverage of the press conference. “I just spent two days with my colleagues upstairs. I didn’t hear an utterance about politics.” He also described the meeting itself as a hard-fought one — “we just came out of a heck of a family fight” — while saying the Committee had come to the right policy decision for the moment, according to the same coverage.

Why it matters

Every FOMC press conference is an Economy scoreboard event on this site, and this one extends the defining sequence of Warsh’s first year: the June hold, the July hold, September’s unanimous hike, and now a hold with both dissents arguing for more tightening rather than less. The decision again lands against the stated position of the President who appointed him: President Trump has argued publicly that rates should be lowered, and no member of the Committee dissented in that direction. The next checkpoint is the FOMC’s final meeting of 2026, in December.

Scoreboard watch

This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: the October 28, 2026 FOMC decision (10–2 vote to maintain the target range at 3.75–4.00 percent, with Cook and Hammack dissenting in favor of a quarter-point increase) and Warsh’s statement that politics played no role in the decision — each as stated in the FOMC statement and reported from the press conference, to be checked against the FOMC’s December 2026 meeting.

Sources: Federal Reserve, “FOMC Press Conference, October 28, 2026” (the Federal Reserve’s official upload, embedded above); FOMC statement, October 28, 2026 (text as released by the Federal Reserve); USA Today live coverage of the October 28, 2026 press conference for Chair Warsh’s remarks. All figures and characterizations as stated by Chair Warsh and the Committee.