CNN on July Inflation Report: ‘Better than Expected’ Despite Trump’s Tariffs

BOLDUAN: “All right, and breaking just moments — moments ago, a very new — very important new data out from the federal government on the economy. The July CPI report just out shows that U.S. Inflation was up just 0.2% last month. Let‘s get to CNN‘s Vanessa Yurkevich, who has got much more detail and much more of what is inside these numbers. What are you seeing?”
YURKEVICH: “A tamer inflation report, despite President Trump‘s Tariffs. This is better than expected. Month over month, as you mentioned, up 0.2%. On an annual basis, up 2.7% in July. That‘s also what we saw on an annual basis for the month of June. When you look at the key categories that we always look at — energy, food and shelter — energy fell by 1.1%. That was largely driven because of gas prices falling in the month of July by 2.2%. Look at that food. I mean, this is where people spend their money, right? Food every single day. Food flat 0% and actually down at the grocery store by 0.1%. And then shelter, we always usually see an increase because that is what people are paying on rent, and we know that rents are rising. That is usually the biggest share of this report. But when we look at core inflation, this is where we‘re starting to see some of those price increases. Core inflation actually came in hotter than expected. So, month over month, up 0.3%. And on an annual basis up 3.1%. that‘s actually the highest reading we‘ve seen since February. And this is important because it strips out that volatility of the energy, of the food prices. So you‘re looking at other categories, other categories like apparel, toys, furniture, appliances. These are things that people are spending more discretionarily. You see, though, toys up 0.2%. Furniture came in — that should be 0.9%, 0.9% on furniture. Appliances, though, down. We saw a lot of people front-loading those bigger purchases of appliances before the tariffs hit, so that may be a pullback in consumer spending. Apparel, clothing, back-to-school shopping, up 0.1%. And then beef prices was on there. We‘ve seen beef prices rising dramatically over the past couple of months. Up 2.4%. So while you‘re saving some money at the grocery store, certain items like beef are up 2.4%. And we‘re looking at markets right here. You can see they are up. This is a better than expected report in the face of so much tariff uncertainty.”