In deciding to forgo any more immediate relief, the president could be setting the economy up for the type of painful outcome that Mr. Powell warned of on Tuesday. The Fed chair, who has increasingly called for more government help, said policymakers should err on the side of injecting too much money into the economy rather than too little given how much work remains.
“Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses,” Mr. Powell said in remarks before the National Association for Business Economics.
“Over time, household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy and holding back wage growth,” he said. “By contrast, the risks of overdoing it seem, for now, to be smaller.”
In multiple tweets later Tuesday night, Mr. Trump appeared to backtrack his assertion that an agreement would wait until after Nov. 3, at one point urging both chambers to “IMMEDIATELY Approve” reviving a lapsed loan program for small businesses, funds to prevent airlines from furloughing or laying off workers and another round of stimulus checks. It remained unclear if his tweets, which came after stocks plummeted, reflected a willingness to restart negotiations with Ms. Pelosi. Both provisions have bipartisan support, but several lawmakers have pushed for them to be included in a broader package.
Nearly seven months into the pandemic, millions of Americans remain unemployed as the coronavirus keeps many service industries operating below capacity. The unemployment rate has fallen more rapidly than many economists expected, dropping to 7.9 percent in September, and consumer spending is holding up. But the economy’s resilience owes substantially to strong government assistance that has been provided to households and businesses.
That included direct payments to families, forgivable loans to small businesses and an extra $600 per week in unemployment benefits, which Mr. Powell said had “muted the normal recessionary dynamics that occur in a downturn,” like lower consumer spending that leads to additional layoffs.
But that assistance has since run dry, putting what Mr. Powell called an “incomplete recovery” at risk at a time when he said additional help was likely to be needed. “There is still a long way to go,” he said regarding the labor market, adding that “many will undergo extended periods of unemployment.”