https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/13/economy/us-ppi-producer-inflation-february/index.html From the article: 'Americans just got some reassurances that inflation was slowing, and not reaccelerating, last month. The Producer Price Index, a wholesale inflation gauge that is being closely watched for tariff-related impacts, showed that price hikes slowed substantially in February. The PPI index was unchanged from January, and rose 3.2% for the 12 months ended in February, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Thursday. That marked a sharp slowdown from January, when prices rose 0.6% and 3.7% for those respective periods. Economists were expecting wholesale-level inflation to cool amid falling energy prices, and that was the case: Energy prices fell 1.2% for the month." Good news but I don't think there is any tariff effect in these numbers yet. I could see an uptick in the coming months as the tafiffs kick in.
As I said a few days ago, a recession is a bigger worry than inflation at this point. Democrats raised egg prices by killing millions of chickens but that didn't affect overall inflation that much. A recession may have started last year. The NBER will make the call on that. Our biggest problem is gov't spending and total debt. Just cutting waste, fraud and abuse won't cut it. We're already paying more in interest on the debt than we pay for defense. Democrats have no answers to fix high gov't spending
It will probably be a couple of months before Trump's tariffs really affect prices not mention the supply chain itself. If I were betting I would put my money on a higher rate of inflation six months from now unless Trumponomics triggers a major recession which could slow the rates of price increases although stagflation when both inflation and recession occur simultaneously is not beyond the realm of possibility.
I agree with your post. However, I don't think the US is "paying" for the interest on the national debt ... or at least in the manner in which we think of paying via disbursement of funds. I don't have the numbers, but I believe all of the interest on treasury debt is funded by issuing additional debt. Here's what I can find: The FY2023 federal budget deficit was $1.7 trillion The FY2024 federal deficit was about $1.8 trillion. Interest on the national debt in FY2023 was $880 billion Interest on the national debt in FY2024 was $1.2 trillion Hopefully, this is wrong, and someone can find more accurate and lower numbers.
