The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise its benchmark interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point for the fourth meeting in a row on Wednesday after two days of Federal Open Market Committee meetings.

And after that, markets expect the central bank to come off its hawkish stance to lower inflation and slow down the pace of rate hikes unless data continues to show stubbornly hot inflation.

“We do expect Chair Jerome Powell to… use the post-FOMC press conference to lay the ground for a step down in the pace of rate hikes,” Michael Pearce, senior US economist Capital Economics, wrote in a note to clients. “He could do so by acknowledging the slowdown in the real economy already underway and emphasizing the lags between slowing economic activity and weakening price pressures.”

Some officials felt at the September meeting that central bank could slow the pace of rate hikes at some point and assess impact of previous rates hikes on inflation, according to minutes from the meeting.

Pearce says as interest rates rise above a level of neutral — a level that neither spurs nor slows economic growth — he expects Fed officials to talk about balancing raising rates to cool inflation with the risk of raising rates too high and precipitating a recession.

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly recently laid the table for the Fed to slow down the pace of rate hikes, saying that the Fed should be talking about "stepping down" at some point when inflation data show signs of abating.

"We might find ourselves, and the markets have certainly priced this in, with another 75-basis-point increase," Daly said at a meeting of the University of California, Berkeley's Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics' Policy Advisory Board last week. "But I would really recommend people don't take that away and think, well it's 75 forever."

Data appear to point to signs that domestic demand is being pushed down by higher interest rates. Final sales to private domestic purchasers — a measure of consumer and business spending used to assess underlying demand in the economy — inched up at a 0.1% annual rate in the third quarter after rising 0.5% in the second quarter and 2.1% in the first quarter.