The announcement was expected, although there had been speculation about a possible increase due to higher inflation risks - not least because of higher oil prices as a result of the war in the Middle East.
At the press conference afterwards, Kevin Warsh, in hawkish remarks, emphasized that the central bank's target of an inflation rate of 2 percent per year remains unchanged.
"There is no 'soft' inflation target, there is no 'soft' indirect target. Not as long as this committee decides. There is only one target and that is 2 percent," Warsh said.
In June, inflation was 3.5 percent at an annual rate in the United States, down from 4.2 percent in May.
Disagree
The committee did not agree on an unchanged interest rate in the range of 3.50-3.75 percent. Members Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorie Logan had instead wanted to see the rate increase by 0.25 percentage points.
The interest rate announcement was the second under new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh, who succeeded Jerome Powell earlier this year.
In June, Warsh also left the rate unchanged, despite US President Donald Trump's earlier push to lower it. At that time, all twelve members of the monetary policy committee were in favor of the decision.
Increase in September?
Division within the Fed sends signals that we may see an interest rate hike in the future, emphasizes Mattias Persson, chief economist at Swedbank.
"You can probably expect, just as the market had priced in even before the announcement, that an interest rate increase could very well happen in September," he tells TT.
The US policy rate has been in the range of 3.50-3.75 percent since December last year. At that time, it was lowered by 25 basis points from the range of 3.75-4.00 percent, which had previously been in effect since October.
