Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee said Friday he still sees interest rate cuts in the cards though risks are rising to that outlook.

Speaking two days after he and his colleagues again voted to keep short-term rates steady, Goolsbee told CNBC that he’s been hearing more concerns from businesses in his region about the impact of tariffs and their potential to raise prices and slow growth.

“When you got a lot of uncertainty, I do think you need to wait to see some of these things get cleared up on the policy side,” the central banker said during a “Squawk Box” interview. “I’m out talking to business people and civic leaders throughout this region, and there’s been a decided turn in these conversations over the last six weeks, of anxiety, of pausing, waiting on capital projects, capex, etc., until they figure out tariffs, other fiscal policy.”

Nevertheless, Goolsbee said he still expects future rate cuts even if the Fed is taking a wait-and-see approach for now as issues play out over President Donald Trump’s tariff plans as well as deregulation and tax cuts.

“If we can continue to make progress on inflation over the long run, I believe that rates 12 to 18 months from now will be lower than where they are today,” he said.

Speaking separately Friday morning, New York Fed President John Williams also noted the high level of uncertainty around decision making and economic trends, particularly inflation.

“Recent data — both hard and soft — are sending mixed signals. Measures of policy uncertainty have increased sharply in recent months,” Williams said during a speech in Nassau, Bahamas.

Both policymakers voted with the rest of the Federal Open Market Committee to hold the short-term fed funds rate in a range between 4.25%-4.5%. In its post-meeting statement, the FOMC noted that “uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased” and Chair Jerome Powell used the term “uncertainty” 10 times in his post-meeting news conference.

One question that has come up in recent days has been whether the U.S. economy is headed towards stagflation, or slow growth and rising inflation.

“Tariffs, raise prices and reduce output. So that’s a stagflationary impulse, which is different from saying this is stagflation,” Goolsbee said. “The unemployment rate is barely 4% and inflation is in the 2s. So the hard data that we start from is not the stagflation of the 1970s. It’s just the … the uncomfortable environment is when it’s moving directionally the wrong way.”

FOMC meeting participants kept their projections for two rate cuts through 2025. Markets, though, think the Fed will be more aggressive, pricing in the equivalent of three quarter percentage point reductions, according to CME Group data.

Shares of Accenture slid Thursday after the consulting firm said tighter federal spending efforts have begun to weigh on its revenues.

Shares tumbled nearly 8% in Thursday trading after Accenture’s chief executive officer said in a fiscal second-quarter earnings call that the company’s Federal Services business has lost contracts with the U.S. government after recent reviews.

“Federal represented approximately 8% of our global revenue and 16% of our Americas revenue in FY 2024. As you know, the new administration has a clear goal to run the federal government more efficiently. During this process, many new procurement actions have slowed, which is negatively impacting our sales and revenue,” chief executive Julie Spellman Sweet said in the Thursday call to several Wall Street analysts.

Accenture is among the first of U.S. corporate giants to get hit by the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an effort headed by billionaire Elon Musk to downsize federal agencies and consolidate their office spaces.

Sweet added Accenture’s Federal Services was also affected by guidance from the U.S. General Services Administration to all federal agencies to review their contracts with the top 10 highest paid consulting firms contracting with the U.S. government, and then end contracts that are not considered mission-critical to relevant agencies.

“While we continue to believe our work for federal clients is mission-critical, we anticipate ongoing uncertainty as the government’s priorities evolve and these assessments unfold,” Sweet said.

Sweet added, “We are seeing an elevated level of what was already a significant uncertainty in the global economic and geopolitical environment, marking a shift from our first quarter FY 2025 earnings report in December. At the same time, we believe the fundamentals of our industry remain strong.”

Other consulting companies fell in sympathy. Booz Allen Hamilton shares slid 7.5% on Thursday.

Accenture shares have plunged 22% over the past month, bringing the stock down nearly 15% year to date.

It is becoming harder for Americans to come up with money in case of an emergency, according to a recent survey from the New York Federal Reserve.

The bank’s Survey of Consumer Expectations for February found that the average likelihood of Americans being able to come up with $2,000 within a month if an unexpected need arose hit 62.7%. That’s the lowest level since the survey began tracking the data point in October 2015.

“Taking into account that the CPI [consumer price index] level today is 35% higher than in 2015, the situation is even worse,” said Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo.

Retailers have also been seeing the impact, with many warning first-quarter sales were softer than expected.

“I do think it’s just a bit of an uncertain world out there right now,” Ed Stack, chairman of Dick’s Sporting Goods, told CNBC when asked about the company’s guidance. “What’s going to happen from a tariff standpoint? You know, if tariffs are put in place and prices rise the way that they might, what’s going to happen with the consumer?”

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon recently told an audience at an Economic Club of Chicago event that he has seen some customers that are under budget pressures exhibit stress behaviors.

“You can see that the money runs out before the month is gone. You can see that people are buying smaller pack sizes at the end of the month,” he said.

— CNBC’s Jeff Cox and Gabrielle Fonrouge contributed reporting.