AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday said the latest report on U.S. producer prices was more "mixed" than "hot" given that prior data was revised lower even as the figures for April came in higher than expected.
"I wouldn't call it hot, I'd call it mixed," Powell said at an event in Amsterdam after the Labor Department released the Producer Price Index for April.
Asked if the recent run of higher-than-expected inflation might mean that the Fed's policy rate is not sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to the Fed's 2% target, Powell said "time will tell." But he added that he did not expect the central bank's next move on interest rates would be an increase. More likely it means that rates would remain where they are, in a range of 5.25% to 5.50%, for longer than previously expected, he said.
(Reporting By Bart Meijer and Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; Writing by Dan Burns in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
