WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen appears unruffled by incoming President Donald Trump’s victory last week.

Her remarks to Congress Thursday suggest that the central bank is on track to raise interest rates at its meeting in December, one month before Trump takes office. She said she has no plans to step down before her four-year term ends in January 2018, reiterated the Fed’s political independence and vigorously defended tougher bank regulations established in the wake of the financial crisis.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, left, shakes hands with Joint Economic Committee Chairman Sen. Dan Coats, R-Ind. after she testified on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday. Associated Press/Susan Walsh

An improving U.S. economy has bolstered the case for raising interest rates, Yellen told Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Economic data since Fed policymakers gathered in early November reinforced her view that the economy is making progress toward the Fed’s goals on employment and inflation. She said that at the meeting, she and her colleagues believed that the case for a rate increase “had continued to strengthen and that such an increase could well become appropriate relatively soon.”

Analysts viewed Yellen’s comments as an effort to put financial markets on notice that a rate hike is likely to occur at the Fed’s last meeting of the year on Dec. 13-14. They noted that she dismissed a suggestion that increased market uncertainty after Trump’s election might be cause for a delay.

Asked whether it might be better to push back a move until January, Yellen said that uncertainty surrounding Trump’s proposals for tax cuts and infrastructure spending could well last for a good deal longer than one month.

“Yellen’s testimony before Congress … further cemented in place expectations that the Fed will hike rates next month,” said Michael Feroli, senior economist at JPMorgan.

Asked about her own future, Yellen said it was “fully my intention” to remain as Fed chair until her four-year term ends in late January 2018. She said she could not imagine any circumstance that would cause her to leave early, addressing speculation that she might step down once Trump takes office, given his critical comments of her during the election campaign.

Economists are forecasting that the Fed will raise rates by a quarter-point in December and then will boost rates two more times in 2017. Yellen stressed in her testimony that the slow recovery and absence of inflation pressures should allow the Fed to move gradually in raising its key rate, the federal funds rate.

As measured by the gross domestic product, the economy grew at a 2.9 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, the government has estimated, more than twice the rate in the April-June quarter. The unemployment rate is 4.9 percent, around the level typical of a healthy economy, down from 10 percent in 2009.

Yellen also made clear that her views on bank regulation differ from Trump’s. She gave a strong defense of the Dodd-Frank Act, passed by Congress in 2010 to increase financial market regulations in an effort to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. After the country lived through a “devastating financial crisis,” Yellen said that “I would not want to see the clock turned back on all the improvements we have made.”

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