While Trump’s prices attract economic uncertainty, the Fed debates its next steps

Chris Bergen, who heads a commercial greenhouse company in northern Minnesota, finds himself “walking on a stunned rope” about two months after President Trump’s second term. An acute uncertainty about how commercial and immigration policies of the administration will take place and affect the economy have made it much more prudent as to all expansion plans.

As one of the largest producers of bedding plants, perennials and other flowers in the country, Bergen greenhouses are exhibited on many fronts.

In June, he cracks in more than six million pounds of manitoba peat peat. Suppliers have ceased to quote prices until they have more clarity on the prices. The plastic flower pots that Mr. Bergen imports from China could also end more if prices remain in place, already tightening “thin razor margins”, he said. He also worries about finding workers if Mr. Trump, as part of a repression of immigration, ends a program that provides temporary visas to many agricultural workers in the company.

“We are not putting our foot on the brake, but we are removing the foot from the gas,” said Mr. Bergen, whose family has run the company for over a century.

This caution is one of the biggest concerns for the federal reserve, which faces an increasingly difficult economic moment with little preceding. The central bank is trying to read the economy better while it debates when – or if – it can again reduce interest rates with inflation still too high to its taste. Companies warn both higher prices and slower growth, effects that have not yet been entirely appeared in economic data.

The 12 regional presidents of the Central Bank have always kept companies in their districts closely in order to understand how economic conditions are evolving. This local awareness has taken a new meaning as the range of possible results has widened.