Jeanne Whalen

Right.

And then a lot of companies have found workarounds.

They are, instead of importing things directly from China, their Chinese suppliers are sort of rooting them through Southeast Asian countries.

So those things have helped keep the effects on price increases down a little bit.

That leads me to my next question, though, which is one of the aims of the Trump administration by imposing these tariffs was to bring jobs back to the U.S.,

It sounds like by routing goods from China through other countries to kind of get around the tariffs, it's like not probably achieving that objective.

It's not.

No, I have not seen evidence of broad reshoring, not in such enormous quantities that we've seen the revival of U.S.

manufacturing in the way that the Trump administration has promised.

Still, despite this.

As Gene said a minute ago, economists were worried that tariffs could lead to higher inflation.

But as of now, it hasn't had a huge impact.

Tariffs did start bumping up inflation over the summer, but the latest numbers from November show that inflation has gone down to 2.7% from 3% in September, though that number could be distorted due to the recent government shutdown.

And the Fed has actually cut interest rates three times this year, which shows the Fed is less concerned about inflation than it was several years ago.

But even though the rate of inflation has slowed, things are still more expensive than they were.

And consumers are fuming about it.

Another area of confusion in the economy?

The labor market.

Earlier this week, the government released the latest unemployment rate.

It had risen to 4.6%, which is the highest level in about four years.