The crowd at JD Vance’s campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina on Wednesday booed after a reporter asked the vice presidential candidate for his reaction to the Fed cutting interest rates, which are “going to alleviate inflation for a lot of people.”
“Really quickly, just on the Fed cutting, it’s a very Wall Street Journally question, but the Fed cut the interest rate today by a half a percentage point, going to alleviate inflation for a lot of people. And so if you have any reaction to that?” asked the off-camera reporter.
The crowd loudly booed as Vance began to answer.
“Look my my my reaction is…” Vance said before waiting for the booing to end.
“My, my, my reaction is, a half a point is nothing compared to what American families have been dealing with for the last three years,” he replied to loud cheers from the crowd.
Pundits and economists have long looked for the Fed to cut interest rates as a sign that inflation was finally easing and the economic recovery from the pandemic was taking hold. “This will improve the material well-being of all Americans,” Joe Brusuelas , chief economist at RSM US, told the Washington Post after the rate cut. “We had three years of extremely aggressive policy out of the Fed. We’re now pivoting toward the normalization of rates in the post-pandemic economy.”