Lauren Seidel-Baker

There are hotspots popping up across the country where people want to be, where we're seeing positive population flows, and therefore much stronger economic results.

Yes, it was good that we didn't see a more rapid pickup in inflation.

But for the average consumer out there who might be feeling squeezed by these higher prices, I want to be very clear, this is not a price trend that prices are going down on an outright basis.

This is just saying that prices are rising by a slower amount than had been expected.

So there still is a lot of strain across certain ends of the income spectrum.

But from a policy point of view, yes, we'd

do like to see that number not going up quite so high.

Yes, and even within the energy segment of inflation, gas prices are down due to where the global oil market is today, but electricity costs are much higher due to the electrification of just about everything and all of that AI investment, the data centers that are sopping up so much energy.

So even within that sector, we could expect to see when oil prices stabilize, there's much more upside kind of built in beneath the surface today.

they want to see their bottom line increase.

So passing through more of that tariff, we'll probably see that in the next couple of months.

I think the overall impact of tariffs, it likely peaks in the relatively near term, unless, who knows, maybe we get new tariffs put in place.

I wouldn't be the one to say.

But for the average household, again, these are constant pressures pushing up on our budgets.

Thank you.