What to Watch at the Federal Reserve’s March Meeting

The Federal Reserve is set to extend its pause on interest rate cuts on Wednesday as President Trump’s aggressive approach to tariffs and other economic policies fuel extreme uncertainty about the outlook for inflation, growth and unemployment.

A decision to stand pat would keep interest rates at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent, a level that was reached in December after a series of cuts in the second half of 2024.

Officials at the Fed are in wait-and-see mode, closely tracking the incoming data for signs that progress on inflation is picking back up after a period of stalling out, or that an otherwise solid labor market is starting to crack. What they also want is greater clarity on what exactly Mr. Trump has in store for the economy after a whirlwind of tariff announcements, government spending cuts and deportations.

The Fed will release its latest policy statement at 2 p.m. in Washington, after which Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, will hold a news conference.

Here is what to watch for on Wednesday.

How many cuts?

With the Fed’s pause well telegraphed, perhaps the most important part of the March meeting will come in the form of the central bank’s new “dot plot.”

Released quarterly, it tracks what officials expect will happen with interest rates for the rest of the year and over a longer time horizon. The dot plot aggregates forecasts from all 19 Fed officials, producing a median estimate that is regularly quoted as the clearest read of where the Fed expects interest rates to land.