Inflation holds steady, but Trump’s tariffs are boosting some prices
Falling gas prices helped keep overall inflation tame in July; however, a broader array of products got even more expensive last month, showing that President Donald Trump’s expansive tariffs are being passed along to consumers.
Consumer prices rose 0.2% in July, keeping the annual inflation rate at 2.7%, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Stock futures rose after the data release. Dow futures jumped 210 points, or 0.47%. S&P 500 futures rose 0.45% and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.5%.
“We have seen moderate inflation over the last year … certainly, prices are not going up nearly as quickly as they were a few years ago,” Gus Faucher, senior vice president and chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, told CNN in an interview. “But I do think that consumers are going to start seeing more price increases at the grocery store, at Amazon, things like that.”
“Consumers are going to start to feel a little more stretched over the next few months as we see more of the impact of tariffs passed through from businesses to consumers,” he added.
However, considering that energy and food prices tend to be quite volatile on a month-to-month basis, the “core” index that excludes those two categories is widely viewed as a good measurement of underlying inflation trends.
Core CPI rose 0.3% from June, the fastest increase since January, which brought the annual rate to 3.1%, the highest in five months.
The core goods category, which is being closely scrutinized in the wake of higher tariffs, rose 0.2% for the second consecutive month.
Economists had expected inflation to heat up slightly last month, to 0.2% from June and by 2.8% annually, according to FactSet.
This story is developing and will be updated.
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