Inflation is up from a year ago, but it is not quite where the Federal Reserve wants it to be to justify a normalization from the current low-rate environment.
The currency could do with the help, having taken a fresh knock on Tuesday when the head of Canada's central bank put his own hawkish spin on the outlook for rates there.
Among utilities, France's EDF rose 3.3 percent after appointing a new manager to run its British unit handling the construction of two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point C.
The STOXX 600 index fell 0.3 percent with the banks, whose lending business gets a boost in margins when rates rise, taking off most points from the pan-European index with a fall of 1.3 percent. Trump said his program would double growth to 4 percent or better, though the administration based its first budget plan on achieving a lower but still highly ambitious goal of 3 percent annual growth.
By 0743 GMT in London, the Canadian, New Zealand and Aussie dollars were between 0.2 and 0.6 percent higher on the day against their USA counterpart at respectively C$1.3218, $0.7248 and $0.7581.
With the USA central bank widely expected to raise interest rates by a quarter point to a range between 1.0%-1.25% at the conclusion of its two-day policy meeting at 2:00PM ET (1800GMT), investors' focus will be on any fresh hints on the pace of further tightening in the months to come and next year.
Fed officials said they would increase their benchmark federal-funds rate on Thursday by a quarter percentage point to a range between 1% and 1.25% and penciled in one more increase later this year if the economy performs in line with their forecast. If inflation doesn't pick up, he said, the Fed will find that raising rates and reducing its balance sheet is "going to be a hard manoeuvr". Only Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Fed bank, opposed the increase.
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The committee signaled that more rises are on the horizon and that it "expects that economic conditions will evolve in a manner that will warrant gradual increases in the federal funds rate". This would reduce its holdings of Treasury and mortgage-backed bonds, which they acquired in the wake of the financial crisis to support economic growth.
Regarding the probability of the Fed's raising the rates, Hardy noted that the Fed will do it, as the market strongly expects, adding that the Fed doesn't like to surprise strong expectations.
Yellen was still confident that inflation would rise to and stabilise around the 2.0% level.
Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com, said the cumulative effect of recent rate increases on consumers is "mounting".
The recent economic developments prompted FOMC members to drop their median projection for inflation to 1.6 percent in 2017, from 1.9 percent forecast in March.
Tokyo ended the morning session 0.1 percent higher, while Sydney was up 0.6 percent.
The central bank is all but certain to lift interest rates after its meeting ends later in the day but the main focus will be on chair Janet Yellen's comments afterwards. It is roughly flat against the pound, at $1.2758.
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