Days after the Federal Reserve lowered borrowing costs for a second time since July, a top Fed official signaled Friday that further interest rate cuts could come before year-end.

Vice Chairman Richard Clarida, asked in an interview on CNBC whether markets had seen the final reduction in borrowing costs for 2019, chose to emphasize that the Fed’s September economic projections, released on Wednesday, have seven officials expecting a third rate cut before the end of the year.

“That’s not a commitment; we didn’t vote on it,” he said.

The Fed wants to keep its options open, and Mr. Clarida, the first member of the Fed’s board of governors to speak since Chair Jerome H. Powell’s post-meeting news conference on Wednesday, made that point clear, saying earlier in the interview that “going into October and beyond, we’ll go one meeting at a time.”

He emphasized that the Fed was contending with threats to the economic outlook arising from slowing global growth, President Trump’s trade war and stubbornly weak inflation. But he also highlighted that the labor market and consumer spending were strong.