03:13 PM EDT, 07/30/2025 (MT Newswires) -- The Federal Reserve left its benchmark lending unchanged for a fifth consecutive meeting on Wednesday, with two governors opposing the central bank's decision.

The Federal Open Market Committee held interest rates in the range of 4.25% to 4.50%, in line with Wall Street's expectations. Policymakers lowered rates by 50 basis points in September and by 25 basis points each in November and December.

The FOMC statement showed Wednesday that the decision to hold policy rate steady wasn't unanimous, with Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman preferring a quarter-percentage-point cut. Governor Adriana Kugler, who recently favored holding rates steady "for some time," was absent, the FOMC said.

"The dissenters appear confident that tariffs are a one-off boost to prices rather than posing a lasting threat to the (FOMC's) inflation target and prefer to lower rates closer to neutral to pre-empt any further weakening in the labor market," Oxford Economics Deputy Chief US Economist Michael Pearce said Wednesday in remarks e-mailed to MT Newswires.

Official data are likely to show Friday that the US economy added 102,000 nonfarm jobs in July, which would mark a drop from a 147,000 increase reported the month prior, according to a Bloomberg poll.

The US recently reached trade deals with the European Union, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. US and Chinese officials wrapped up their two-day trade talks in Sweden on Tuesday without announcing an extension to the temporary suspension of tariffs on each other's goods.

The US will impose a 25% tariff rate on India, effective Friday, Trump said in a social media post Wednesday. India will also face a penalty for purchasing weapons and energy from Russia, Trump wrote. In a separate social media post, Trump said that his reciprocal tariff deadline of Friday for trading partners that haven't signed a trade deal with the US "will not be extended."

"Although swings in net exports continue to affect the data, recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year," the FOMC said Wednesday following its two-day meeting. "Uncertainty about the economic outlook remains elevated."

Following its meeting in June, the FOMC said that economic activity was expanding at a "solid" rate and that uncertainty about the economic outlook had "diminished," but was elevated.

Official data showed Wednesday that the US economy grew at a 3% annual rate in the second quarter. That compares with 2.6% growth modeled by analysts. The latest gross domestic product reading is "way better" than projected, Trump said in a social media post, again urging the Fed to ease monetary policy ahead of the Wednesday decision.

The FOMC's next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 16-17. There's a roughly 53% probability of a 25-basis-point cut at that meeting, while the odds of another pause were at about 46%, according to the CME FedWatch tool. Oxford Economics said Wednesday it doesn't see the next rate coming until December.