America's Talking - Inflation Holds Steady Amid Trade War Threats

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

(The Center Square) – As President Donald Trump’s tariff policies come into effect, July’s Consumer Price Index showed overall consumer prices rose 2.7% annually, slightly lower than forecasted by economists. The CPI measures changes in price of everyday consumer goods like groceries and clothes over time. July’s CPI rose 0.2% on a monthly basis since June’s reading which came in at 2.7%. Since a universal 10% tariff was implemented in April, economists have been watching how levies would affect costs for consumers. Data has shown that tariff impacts have been marginal so far this year, in part due to businesses stockpiling goods before tariffs went into effect.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Full story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_86a16aec-5925-4480-8b77-b8a350e78220.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Brett Rowland, investigative reporter for the Center Square. Joining me today is Caroline Boda from our national team. How are you, Caroline? I'm doing good. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks so much for being here. It's been a busy week. President Trump's imposed tariffs on more than 66 countries and various imports since taking office in January, with another round of tariffs going into effect August 1st. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out this week giving us, more of an idea of what's going on and how these tariffs are affecting the U.S. economy. Caroline, what did we learn this week?

Yeah, so this week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out with their monthly consumer price index. So this report comes out every month with the data from the month before. So the data from this week that came out is July's data. and the CPI tracks the prices of certain goods, everyday goods bought by consumers. So that includes at the grocery store, it can include clothes, and it tracks how the prices of these goods change over time. And so the data this week showed that overall consumer prices rose 2.7% in July, and that's comparing it to last July.

And this actually came in a bit lower than economists forecasted. So it kind of shows increases in prices in some areas and then it shows decreases in others. So specifically, it saw ground beef rise almost 12% from last July. It saw eggs rise 16% from last July, but then it saw gas prices decline, about 10% from last July. So the data kind of shows a push and pull increases in some places, decreases in others. And this gives us a better idea of how President Donald Trump's tariffs are affecting the U.S. economy. Economists have been closely watching that to see how prices, tariffs would trickle down to the prices that consumers are paying at the grocery store and the gas pump. And so this gives us a little bit better of an idea about how tariffs are affecting us.

And what does this tell us about what tariffs are going to, or what's going to happen next with tariffs here? I mean, where do we, where do we think things are gone from here? Yeah. So since Trump implemented the first round of tariffs in April, we've kind of been watching how prices might increase. And actually so far, the effects of the tariffs were marginal. And this can likely, at least in part, be due to businesses getting ahead of the tariffs. When Trump announced those tariffs, businesses kind of stockpiled on the front end, they imported a lot of goods so that they wouldn't have to pay tariffs when those went into effect. So we saw a large increase in tariffs earlier in the year.

And so that's likely why consumers haven't seen too much of an increase in prices so far. But in June, when the data came out with the CPI, we started to see a bit of an increase in prices. So that was specifically concentrated in categories like furniture and household appliances. And then this data that we're looking at from July shows that trend continued. But it is important to note that this data is just for July, so it doesn't include the new round of tariffs that came out August 1st. So the full impact of Trump's tariffs right now is unknown. So we'll need to be watching in the coming months for the new data. And then Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates for some time now.

He's favoring really aggressive cuts. will the numbers, the economic data we saw this week, will that affect how the Fed decides what to do with interest rates next month? Yeah. So we've seen a bit of a quarrel played out publicly between President Trump and the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell. Since coming into office for his second term, Trump has repeatedly pushed the Fed to lower, lower interest rates. And despite those requests, Powell has maintained interest rates as is. He has said that with the widespread tariffs that Trump is implementing, Powell has said that he wants to watch the economy to see how tariffs will affect the

economy before he slashes rates. But it is expected. It's been widely expected that Powell will lower. rates in September and the increases in prices that we've seen with July's data are likely not significant enough to deter the Fed from going forward with those plans. Do you think there's been some speculation that the rate cut could be bigger than a quarter point, could even be a half point. What do you think at this point or is it too early to tell? I think it's too early to tell.

The Fed is in, it's pretty tight-lipped about, about their plans. And especially Powell hasn't really shared. So it's more speculation that the rates will be slashed. But at least from this data, we can, we can predict that the effects won't be too great. And that it's likely that the Fed will slash rates in September. as expected. Thank you, Caroline, for all your insights into these important stories,

but that's all the time we have for this week. Everyone can keep up with these stories and more at thecentersquare.com.