By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve faces an unusually contentious meeting this week that will test Chair Jerome Powell’s ability to corral the necessary support from fellow policymakers for a third straight interest rate cut.

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The Fed’s 19-member rate-setting committee is sharply divided over whether to lower borrowing costs again. The divisions have been exacerbated by the convoluted nature of the economy: Inflation remains elevated, which would typically lead the Fed to keep its key rate unchanged, while hiring is weak and the unemployment rate has risen, which often leads to rate cuts.

Some economists expect three Fed officials could vote against the quarter-point cut that Powell is likely to support at the Dec. 9-10 meeting, which would be the most dissenting votes in six years. Just 12 of the 19 members vote on rate decisions. Several of the non-voting officials have also said they oppose another rate cut.

“It’s just a really tricky time. Perfectly sensible people can reach different answers,” said William English, an economist at the Yale School of Management and a former top Fed staff member. “And the committee kind of likes to work by consensus, but this is a situation where that consensus is hard to reach.”

The debate, which has also been fueled by a lack of official federal data on employment and inflation during the government shutdown, could be a preview of where the Fed is headed after Powell’s term as chair ends in May. His successor will be appointed by President Donald Trump and is widely expected to be Kevin Hassett, the top White House economic adviser. Hassett may push for faster cuts than other officials would be willing to support.

English said the potential for greater disagreement could be seen as a sign of healthy debate between different views. The Fed’s tradition of reaching unanimous or nearly-unanimous decisions has often been criticized as evidence of “groupthink.” Yet some Fed officials warn that there are downsides to sharp splits. If the committee votes end up as 8-4 or even 7-5, then financial markets could lose confidence in where the central bank is headed next.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller, for example, has said that in the case of a 7-5 vote, if just one official changed their view, it could bring about a significant shift in Fed policy.

For now, however, most economists expect what’s called a “hawkish cut” — the Fed will reduce rates, while also signaling that it may stand pat for some time to assess the economy’s health. (“Hawks” refer to officials who generally support higher rates to combat inflation, while “doves” more often support lower rates to boost hiring).

FILE – A seal is seen before Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell walks out to speak during a news conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Sept. 17, 2025, at the Federal Reserve Board Building in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

The president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, Jeffrey Schmid, is expected to dissent for a second straight meeting in favor of keeping rates unchanged. He may be joined by St. Louis Fed president Alberto Musalem. Fed governor Stephen Miran, who was hurriedly appointed to the Fed’s board by Trump in September, will likely dissent for a third straight meeting in favor of a larger, half-point reduction in the Fed’s key rate.

After the Fed’s last meeting Oct. 28-29, several policymakers said they would prefer to keep rates unchanged at the December meeting, leading Wall Street investors to briefly downgrade the odds of a third rate cut to less than 30%. But then John Williams, president of the New York Fed, said that this year’s uptick in inflation appears to be a temporary blip driven by Trump’s tariffs that would likely fade by the middle of 2026.

As a result, “I still see room for a further adjustment” in the Fed’s short-term rate, Williams said. As president of the New York Fed and vice chair of the rate-setting committee, Williams gets to vote on every interest rate decision and is close to Powell. Analysts said it was unlikely Williams would have made such a statement without Powell’s support. Investors rapidly lifted the odds of a cut, which now are at 89%, according to CME Fedwatch.

“You’re seeing the power of the chair,” said Nathan Sheets, chief global economist at Citi and also a former top Fed staffer. “Members of the committee, my instinct is, are wanting to underscore their support for Powell.”

Powell has come under relentless attack from Trump, who just last month said he would “love to fire his ass” and called Powell “this clown.”

The Fed is required by Congress to seek low inflation and maximum employment, two goals that are potentially in conflict.

For now, Powell and many other Fed officials are more concerned about hiring and unemployment rather than inflation. While the official government jobs reports have been delayed, in September the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, the third straight increase and the highest in four years.

Payroll provider ADP, meanwhile, reported that in November, its data showed companies shed 32,000 jobs. And many large firms have announced sweeping layoffs.

Worries that the job market could get worse are a key reason a rate cut in December is likely — but not necessarily beyond that. Fed officials will have up to three months of backlogged jobs and inflation data to consider when they meet in late January. Those figures could show inflation remains stubbornly high or that hiring has rebounded, which would suggest further cuts aren’t needed.

“What they may end up agreeing to do is cut rates now, but give some guidance … that signals that they’re on pause for a while after that,” Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, said.

By JAMES POLLARD, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — More and more people are turning to GoFundMe for help covering the cost of housing, food and other basic needs.

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The for-profit crowdfunding platform’s annual “Year in Help” report, released Tuesday, underscored ongoing concerns around affordability. The number of fundraisers started to help cover essential expenses such as rent, utilities and groceries jumped 20%, according to the company’s 2025 review, after already quadrupling last year. “Monthly bills” were the second fastest-growing category behind individual support for nonprofits.

The number of “essentials” fundraisers has increased over the last three years in all of the company’s major English-speaking markets, according to GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan. That includes the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

In the United States, the self-published report comes at the end of a year that has seen weakened wage growth for lower-income workers, sluggish hiring, a rise in the unemployment rate and low consumer confidence in the economy.

Cadogan said GoFundMe can see that people are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living.

“Someone may be behind on rent or needs a little bit of extra help to get through the next month,” Cadogan said. “That’s a function of what’s going on in these economies. And what is interesting is that people do step up and support folks in those situations.”

Among campaigns aimed at addressing broader community needs, food banks were the most common recipient on GoFundMe this year. The platform experienced a nearly sixfold spike in food-related fundraisers between the end of October and first weeks of November, according to Cadogan, as many Americans’ monthly SNAP benefits got suddenly cut off during the government shutdown.

These uses suggest that online crowdfunding has come a long way from its roots as a way for entrepreneurs to raise money for their artistic or business endeavors, according to University of Toronto postdoctoral researcher Martin Lukk.

Lukk, who studies economic inequality and co-authored a book about the “unfulfilled promise of digital crowdfunding,” said the findings act somewhat as a “barometer of where things are at in terms of desperation.”

“When there’s no other net to catch people, I think GoFundMe is where they often end up,” Lukk said.

Lukk cautioned that GoFundMe data doesn’t show the “full extent of the desperation” because not everyone in need participates and many users don’t end up reaching their goals. Organizers must have internet access and technological know-how, he said, and a successful campaign often requires savvy storytelling and strong social networks.

Cadogan said his team always hopes that countries have strong government programs around health, housing or seniors’ wellbeing, for example. But GoFundMe recognizes that no country’s systems address everything, he added.

At the end of a year that began with the Los Angeles wildfires that struck Cadogan’s community of Altadena, the GoFundMe CEO said he is “blown away” by the power of help. While asking for help can be a “difficult step,” he said, it is a “courageous act” that is worth taking.

“Taking that action opens the door to what can be incredible goodness,” Cadogan said.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that the Trump administration’s new national security strategy underscores the need for Europe to become “much more independent” from the United States in terms of security policy.

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Merz also pushed back against the notion that European democracy needs saving.

The U.S. strategy, published Friday, paints European allies as weak, while offering tacit support to far-right political parties, and was critical of European free speech and migration policy. On Monday, European Council President António Costa warned the U.S. against interfering in Europe’s affairs and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.

Merz, the leader of the European Union’s most populous nation and its biggest economy, said he wasn’t surprised by the substance of the strategy as it was largely in line with a lecture U.S. Vice President JD Vance gave to European allies in Munich in February.

Parts of the document are understandable, but “some of it is unacceptable for us from the European point of view,” he told reporters in the western German city of Mainz.

“That the Americans want to save democracy in Europe now, I don’t see any need for that,” Merz said. “If it needed to be saved, we would manage that alone.”

He added that the new U.S. document “confirms my assessment that we in Europe, and so also in Germany, must become much more independent from the U.S. in terms of security policy. This is not a surprise, but it has now been confirmed again. It has been documented.”

Merz said that Vance’s speech earlier this year had “set off something in me as well, and you can see that today in our defense spending.”

Merz’s government, in office since May, has enabled higher spending by loosening strict rules on incurring debt — adding to an effort to bolster Germany’s military that has been underway since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022.

Under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, NATO members, including Germany, agreed in June to a massive hike in the alliance’s defense spending target.

“In my talks with the Americans, I say: ‘America first is fine,’ but ‘America alone’ can’t be in your interest. You need partners in the world too,” Merz said Tuesday. “And one of the partners can be Europe. And if you can’t do anything with Europe, then at least make Germany your partner.”

It was long overdue and published discreetly, unaccompanied by the usual presidential speechifying so far. And yet America’s new National Security Strategy — the document that in theory will guide foreign policy during the second administration of Donald Trump — speaks volumes about the president’s worldview.

Latin America, already being buzzed by American war planes, won’t be surprised to hear that it is now officially on notice, owing to a newly proclaimed “Trump Corollary” to the old Monroe Doctrine. Europe will be offended by much in the document and should pay attention. China won’t be any wiser, except in knowing that America still, sort of, backs Taiwan. The Middle East, at long last, is shrinking in relative importance. Africa is an afterthought, while North Korea isn’t mentioned at all. By contrast, anti-woke culture warriors should be doing cartwheels.

The NSS is a sporadic document, required by law, that typically signals the gist of an administration’s view on geopolitics. It also guides other papers, such as the National Defense Strategy (also overdue and forthcoming), which have far-reaching bureaucratic and budgeting consequences.

The text produced in the first Trump administration was clear, verging on belligerent, in defining great-power competition with Russia and China (as opposed to the war against terrorism, say) as the guiding principle of US foreign policy. It was also almost certainly never read by the president, who introduced it with a speech that bore little resemblance to its contents.

His second administration’s NSS is different. It is short and apparently worded to fit the attention span and interests of the president. In several passages, it is also well-written, especially as a catchy and populist — but perceptive — critique of the foreign-policy platitudes peddled since the Cold War by Washington’s foreign-policy elite, pejoratively dubbed “the blob.”

Strategy documents for the past three decades, the NSS says, “have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes.” Amen. In particular, the text goes on, “our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest.” That’s as pithy a statement of the MAGA rebellion against “liberal internationalism” or the American-led “rules-based order” as you can get.

The NSS’s authors also did their best to navigate around the many contradictions that riddle the president’s foreign policy and by extension the document. His approach, they write, is “pragmatic without being ‘pragmatist,’ realistic without being ‘realist,’ principled without being ‘idealistic,’ muscular without being ‘hawkish,’ and restrained without being ‘dovish.’” A convenient translation: Strategy is whatever Trump says tomorrow on Air Force One, or later in the Oval Office, even if it contravenes everything he said on Truth Social today.

All this preening shouldn’t obscure a shift in some emphases. Several things are consistent: It was always clear that the president views Moscow (not mentioned much, and in part as a potential partner) more favorably than did any of his predecessors since World War II, and that he regards Ukraine’s sovereignty (mentioned in passing on page 25 of 29) as a minor concern of the United States.

China, though, was expected to play a larger, if not the largest, role, since the administration includes notable China hawks who want to shift American resources from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific. That mini-pivot still appears to be happening, but is now subsumed within a much bigger reorientation from the world at large to the Western Hemisphere, which Trump seems inclined to boss around. Three months into a mighty military build-up off the coast of Venezuela — and following threats to hemispheric neighbors from Canada to Brazil — that shouldn’t come as a shock.

Some of the harshest and most gratuitous language is reserved for America’s oldest allies in Europe and seems to bear the mark of Vice President JD Vance, who struck the same tone in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February.

The NSS depicts Europe as a continent facing not only “economic decline” but “civilizational erasure,” owing to immigration. The paper also alleges that Europe practices “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition,” a benevolent wink to right-wing parties such as Germany’s Alternative for Germany, which Vance favors but which the European mainstream marginalizes (for good reasons). The NSS concedes that the US can’t “afford to write Europe off” — phew, what a relief — but ominously stipulates that “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”

The rest is largely as predicted. The strategy heaps contempt on multilateral and international organizations (which Trump has been quitting, boycotting or deriding), while appearing to bless a return to 19th-century-style spheres of influence: “The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.” Presumably, Trump wants a new Yalta-like arrangement among the US, China and Russia.

And as ever, Trump’s friends, business and golf partners do well: After the document harangues the Europeans for their way of life, it graciously promises to stop “hectoring” the Gulf monarchies into “abandoning their traditions,” which have rarely resembled Madisonian democracy.

I asked Rebecca Lissner what she thought of the strategy; she co-drafted an early version of the NSS during the administration of Joe Biden, before becoming a top advisor to his vice president, Kamala Harris. The paper was “a box-checking exercise,” she emailed me, and “more polemic than policy.” Indeed, it must be the first NSS ever to mention the fight against “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) as a priority in keeping America strong and safe. As in Trump’s first term, it also won’t make much of a practical difference, she thinks, because the president is “too impulsive, erratic, and opportunistic.”

The document is nonetheless worth a read, whether you’re in Beijing or Moscow, Brussels or Berlin, Caracas, Riyadh or even Pyongyang — the latter so inexplicably ignored in the paper. This new National Security Strategy reflects an administration that claims not to have an ideology but still filters the world through its MAGA lenses. It portrays a government that will keep contorting itself to add semantic coherence to the whims of a president who does whatever he wants.

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

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