WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) - Data showing temperate consumer inflation in April does not necessarily reflect the impact of rising U.S. import tariffs, with the Federal Reserve still needing more data to discern the direction of prices and the economy, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said on Wednesday.
Consumer prices rose a less-than-expected 2.3% in April, for the smallest annual increase in four years, but the headline number was held down by falling food prices, which can be volatile from month to month.
Excluding food and energy, so-called "core" inflation was 2.8%, the same as in March.
"There are moments of a lot of dust in the air," Goolsbee said on NPR's Morning Edition radio show. "We've got a bunch of noise ... We're trying to figure out the through line."
The Fed has held interest rates steady since December, and is likely to keep doing so as officials wait to see how the Trump administration's tariff increases and ongoing trade negotiations play out.
"We continue to get these numbers that at least suggest that it's going okay," said Goolsbee, a current voter on the Fed committee that sets interest rates.
"It's just, I think, not realistic to expect businesses or central banks to be jumping to conclusions about long-term things when you've got so much short-term variability. That's just a very difficult environment."
Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Alex Richardson and Clarence Fernandez
