The Fed chairman's remarks on Friday suggested the central bank's fight against inflation is far from over – raising the possibility that policymakers will keep raising interest rates until price pressures cool further.

The U.S. monetary authority left rates unchanged this month for the first time since last spring, but signaled it may raise them twice more before year-end. “I don't see us getting back to 2% this year or next year,” Powell said at the 2023 ECB forum. “I see us getting there the year after.”

U.S. inflation has been declining steadily in recent months, thanks to the Fed's policy efforts to tame price pressures. The annual pace of consumer-price increases cooled to 4% in May from a 40-year high of 9.1% reached in mid-2022, but it still remains twice the central bank's target.