The vast bulk of economists surveyed in the Financial Times-Booth poll say the Federal Reserve should lift borrowing costs to bring inflation under control, a reading that places the central bank directly at odds with President Trump.
The FT-Booth poll positions the rate question alongside a harder one: should the Fed act against the president's preferences? The economists surveyed answer yes. The case for a rise is, as the poll frames it, the inflation argument: borrowing costs should go up because prices need to be tamed. The language the poll uses is deliberate. A call to "defy" the president signals that respondents see their recommendation as carrying political weight alongside the monetary case.
The survey result is direct. The vast bulk of respondents point in one direction. The read-through is that, in the economists' collective view, the inflation argument overrides the political pressure. What's changed is that the poll names the pressure explicitly, rather than treating monetary policy as a purely technical question.
The counterargument is that a central bank openly defying the executive accumulates institutional risk. A stand-off with the White House creates pressure on appointments and on the Fed's standing as a body that operates above the political fray. The inflation math may favor a rise. Whether the Fed judges the political cost of acting on that math to be manageable is a question the FT-Booth survey does not answer.
On balance, the poll delivers a clear signal from professional consensus: the inflation case is strong enough that the economists surveyed say the Fed should raise rates even against the president's wishes. The risk is that the central bank's own deliberations weight political friction more heavily than the survey's respondents do. The line to watch is whether the Fed moves in the direction the economists point, or holds back for reasons the poll says it should not.