WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday, a choice that may intensify questions about how U.S. central bank chief Kevin Warsh will deliver on his commitment to bring inflation back down to the 2% target.

The widely expected decision to leave the benchmark interest rate in the 3.50%-3.75% range drew dissents from three of the 12 members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee who “preferred” a quarter-percentage-point hike at this meeting. Those same three officials — the presidents of the Fed’s Cleveland, Dallas and Minneapolis regional banks — had also dissented at Jerome Powell’s final meeting as central bank chief in late April. In that case, they favored removing the implied promise of lower rates in the policy statements. Warsh, who took over as head of the Fed in May, has said he has “no tolerance” for inflation that has been running above the central bank’s target for more than five years, and up until last month was accelerating as the war in the Middle East pushed up global fuel and food prices, and investment in data centers and other spending tied to artificial intelligence drove up demand. “Inflation remains elevated relative to the Committee’s 2% goal,” the Fed said in a short policy statement after the end of its latest two-day meeting. It replicated word-for-word all of the June 17 statement’s assessment of the economy.

The Fed noted that economic activity is “expanding at a solid pace,” saying, as it did in June, that job gains “have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.” Speaking in a news conference after the release of the policy decision, Warsh said, “We’ve begun a new chapter, and we understand that the five-plus years of inflation above-target cannot be cured in nine weeks, or by a single month of modest price decreases. This Fed will not waver” on getting inflation back to the 2% target.