OAN Staff Katherine Mosack
6:25 PM – Wednesday, December 10, 2025
The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced on Wednesday that it would lower the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, a quarter-point cut, to 3.50%–3.75%.
The decision, voted on by a 9–3 margin, represents the third consecutive rate cut this year, following reductions in September and October, for a total of 75 basis points lowered since the cycle began.
The move aims to support a cooling labor market, lower borrowing costs for consumers, and address any inflation, according to the official FOMC statement and Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference.
“Available indicators suggest that economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace. Job gains have slowed this year, and the unemployment rate has edged up through September,” the Fed said in a statement.
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Stephen Miran, who served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Donald Trump before his appointment to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in September, was one of the three dissenting voters. He advocated for a larger 50 basis-point (0.5 percentage point) cut instead of the approved 25 basis-point reduction.
The other two dissenters were Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan D. Goolsbee and Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Jeffrey R. Schmid, both of whom preferred no rate cut at all.
“Today’s degree of division within the Fed should not come as a surprise to markets,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said in an email. “With the recent scarcity of economic data and the wide dispersion in neutral rate estimates, it is hard to imagine any level of confidence in the economy that would lead to unanimous Fed voting,” Shah added.
The 43-day government shutdown this fall — the longest in U.S. history — caused somewhat of a fog over economic data. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) stopped, impacting some October data, along with the Producer Price Index (PPI).
Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) and monthly payroll reports were also delayed or canceled, giving little insight into employment data. The initial quarter three GDP estimate was also canceled, among other interruptions.
In late October, the Fed cut rates to its lowest level in three years, dropping by another 0.25 percentage point to 3.75% to 4.00%, marking the second cut of the year.
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