Fed's Goolsbee says there's a lot of anxiety over tariffs

(Reuters) - Chicago Federal Reserve Bank President Austan Goolsbee on Monday said businesses are anxious about U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs but that the central bank would need to look at "hard data" in its policy response.

"The anxiety is if these tariffs are as big as what are threatened on the U.S. side, and if there's massive retaliation, and then if there's counter-retaliation again, it might send us back to the kind of conditions that we saw in '21 and '22 when inflation was raging out of control," Goolsbee said in an interview with CNN.

However, he also acknowledged the uncertainty around the outcomes and the possibility that negotiations could lead to new trade agreements and avoid tariffs of more than 100%, referring to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's pledge of a "golden age of trade".

Global stocks have plummeted since Trump announced a set of sweeping tariffs last week, triggering an escalating trade war. China and the European Union swiftly countered by proposing higher tariffs of their own, which Trump in turn threatened to fight with even higher duties.

Goolsbee said the current anxiety could change consumer and business spending, which in turn might require the Fed to respond.

However, the precise nature of that response would depend on how prices and economic growth moved and the duration of those trends.

"Our job is to look at the hard data," Goolsbee said. "And if we have something that's both deteriorating economic growth and driving up the prices - that is to say, something that is stagflationary - there?is not a generic answer to what the Fed should do in response to that."

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Tom Hogue and Sam Holmes)