During what was variously described as a disastrous press conference on Wednesday, Jerome Powell said trade tensions nearly "boiled over" in May and June but "returned to a simmer" in July.
The Fed Chair made a number of mistakes over the course of his press conference, and that was one of them.
Not only did it suggest, to markets, that the Fed assessed trade tensions as likely to ease further, thereby reducing uncertainty and mitigating the need to cut rates further, it also signaled, to President Trump, that convincing policymakers to ease aggressively would likely