Inside the "biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history"
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What is the biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history?
an encouraging inflation report to end the week, plus the rise of concierge medicine, and AI comes to your weather forecast. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In Denver, I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Risdahl. It's Friday, February 13th. Good to have you with us. It's been about five years now that we've been living with inflation higher than the Fed's target of 2% annually, but we're getting closer to that target. Today's delayed Consumer Price Index report From the Labor Department, shows prices rose just 2.4% on an annual basis in January, down from 2.7% the previous month, and way down from the peak of more than 9% in 2022. But as usual, the devil is in the details. And here to dive in with us are Catherine Rampell at The Bulwark and MSNOW, and also Greg Ip at The Wall Street Journal.
How does the EPA's repeal of the endangerment finding affect public health?
Hi, you two. Hey, Amy. Hello. All right, Greg, let's start with your takeaways from that inflation report. Good news?
Well, yeah, I'd say that it is a good report. The inflation rate of 2.4%, certainly a lot lower, as you were saying, than it was a few years ago. And economists like to take out the energy and food portions, not because they don't actually think those are important, but because they're very volatile. Right. And if you do that, you come up with an inflation rate of only around 2.5%, which is the lowest for that number since 2021, just after the pandemic.
What claims does the Trump administration make about the repeal's economic impact?
But as you said, the devil is in the details. If you look below the surface, you do still see some signs of tariff inflation in things like appliances and other imported goods. And also, this may come as a surprise to some people, but there's actually several different ways to measure inflation. And the Federal Reserve has its own preferred inflation gauge. And when you actually see how today's report affects that alternative gauge, it suggests inflation might actually be still stuck at around 3%, which is too high for the Fed, which prefers an inflation rate of 2%.
Catherine, what about you? What are you seeing in this report? What stood out to you? A lot of the same highlights that Greg just mentioned. So, yep, good news that so-called core inflation stripping out volatile food and energy prices fell to its lowest level in almost five years.
What are the hidden costs associated with cheaper cars?
It's a little bit hard to know how much to take this report at face value because there's still probably some distortions from the recent government shutdown, of course. And as Greg points out, there's also evidence that tariff rates tariff costs may be increasingly passed along to consumers. We've had a few different reports recently from CBO and I think the New York Fed research team finding that consumers are paying most of the tariff costs. And you see that in some of the numbers today. I think Greg mentioned a appliances maybe, but you also saw appliances, furniture, I think new cars, all saw pretty sharp price increases in January, probably related to the fact that companies are having to pass along their costs since they can no longer keep absorbing them indefinitely from tariffs.
Right.
And
And Jerome Powell, the Fed chair for now, talked about this last month, saying that the expectation is we'll see the effects of tariffs flowing through goods prices, peaking and then starting to come down over the course of this year.
How is concierge medicine changing the healthcare landscape?
Greg, how near to the peak do you think we are? And is it surprising that the tariffs haven't shown up more in price increases?
I think we're actually right around the peak. And that, as you suggested, as Powell predicts, we're going to see less and less of that effect as the year unfolds. And you're right, the tariff impact on inflation has been less than most people would have thought about a year ago. I think the average forecast back then was we'd get about a percentage point of tariff inflation. And in fact, we only got about a half a percentage point. And the good news is, is that we're probably not going to see tariffs going up any longer than In fact, there is increasing efforts by the Trump administration to pare back tariff increases by cutting deals with particular countries, by reducing the amount of specially sensitive products.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history?
0:02–1:09
2
How does the EPA's repeal of the endangerment finding affect public health?
1:09–1:44
3
What claims does the Trump administration make about the repeal's economic impact?
1:44–2:39
4
What are the hidden costs associated with cheaper cars?
2:39–3:53
5
How is concierge medicine changing the healthcare landscape?
3:53–4:43
6
What are the benefits and drawbacks of concierge medicine for patients?
4:43–5:38
7
How is AI transforming weather forecasting?
5:38–6:46
8
What potential does AI hold for long-term weather predictions?
6:46–25:47