By BINYAMIN APPELBAUMMARCH 12, 2017

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUMMARCH 12, 2017
WASHINGTON — For President Trump and his economic advisers, the strong February jobs report was a cause for celebration —
and a first step toward delivering on the president’s promise of faster economic growth.
Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that he is determined to stimulate faster growth while the central bank, for its part, is indicating
that it will seek to restrain any acceleration in economic activity.
Representative Steve Pearce, a New Mexico Republican, asked Ms. Yellen rather incredulously at a congressional
hearing in February whether the Fed would really try to offset faster growth by raising rates more quickly.
On the other hand, she said, the Fed would try to offset faster growth “if we think
that it is demand-based and threatens our inflation objective” — a technical description of what would happen if Congress cut taxes or increased spending.
Since then, employment has continued to expand at an average of 215,000 jobs a month
— more than twice the job growth necessary to keep pace with population growth.
Fed officials predicted in December that the economy would expand 2.1 percent this
year, slightly faster than the 1.8 percent pace they regard as sustainable.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly painted economic conditions in some of the bleakest language ever used by an American president,
and he has described his fiscal policy agenda as necessary to revive growth and restore the nation’s prosperity.