"This is a double edged one for Harris," Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University, said. "If Harris leans into this and says, 'We told you it's working. Look, the Fed is doing this,' there's a way in which you could imagine that is played back against her. But if she doesn't take credit for it, then she doesn't get any credit for it."
President Joe Biden's administration, including Harris, has been careful to respect the independence of the Fed, according to Ernie Tedeschi, the chief economist at the Yale Budget Lab. He suspects that Harris is pleased with the cut, but will be 'careful' with her rhetoric to avoid bolstering the idea that it was partisan. Republicans are already pushing on the partisanship idea - yesterday, Speaker Mike Johnson said that 'the timing is a little suspect,' while acknowledging that the news was good for consumers.
"On the other hand, Vice President Harris is running to be president of the same economy that the Federal Reserve is managing," Tedeschi told Business Insider. "And so I would not be surprised if she made some parallel observations to what we heard from Powell, which is that inflation has clearly come down from its heights in 2022."
Regardless of his plans, both Blyth and Tedeschi anticipate that Trump will continue talk regarding the Fed's role in economy management, which could lead to a more partisan politicization of the Federal Reserve's actions, especially if he wins the presidency again.
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