Can Perplexity’s Longshot Bid for Google Chrome Succeed?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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President Trump calls for Goldman Sachs to replace its chief economist over his past predictions on the impact of tariffs. Plus, AI startup Perplexity makes a bid for Google's Chrome browser. Can it succeed? And the White House's goal behind its review of the Smithsonian Museums.
They've really focused on any narrative that they deem to be partisan or anything that downplays their idea of American exceptionalism.
It's Tuesday, August 12th. I'm Alex Ocelev for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Let's start with the latest data on US inflation. New data from the Labor Department out today showed that consumer prices were up 2.7% in July from a year earlier. That was unchanged from June's gain of 2.7% and below the 2.8% rise that economists expected. But prices excluding food and energy categories, the so-called core measure economists watch in an effort to better capture inflation's underlying trend, rose 3.1 percent over the last 12 months, above forecasts for a 3 percent increase. For more on what this data means, I'm joined by WSJ economics reporter Rachel Wolff.
Rachel, tariffs have been around for six months. I know that a lot of economists were watching this data to see if tariffs are having an effect. What are we seeing here?
So in June, we started to see the first signs that tariffs were beginning to get passed on to consumers. We saw a little more of that in July. So in categories that have a lot of imports like furniture, tires, pet products, there were larger than normal increases last month. That being said, it wasn't consistent across the board. So some economists thought that apparel, for instance, would see bigger price increases by now because we import a lot of clothes online. But so far, it has not gone up as much as economists predicted.
What are the top headlines introduced at the start of the episode?
And a reason why could be that retailers really stocked up in advance of tariffs. They might be sitting on a lot of supply. New car prices, same deal.
What else could be driving prices up besides tariffs?
So economists were looking at goods for this inflation report. They were really expecting to see increases concentrated in stuff. But really what we ended up seeing was that services like airline tickets and medical services and car maintenance went up more than predicted. For instance, airline tickets were up 4%. And what economists think that that is tied to is that the job market is still pretty strong and people are still spending money. And that means that it's not just tariffs having an effect. It's also people spending money.
That was WSJ economics reporter Rachel Wolf. Thank you, Rachel. Thanks so much. The latest consumer price report made investors more confident that the Federal Reserve will cut short-term interest rates next month. Major U.S. indexes were up. The Nasdaq rose about 1.5 percent, hitting a new record, its 19th of the year. The S&P 500 added about 1.1 percent, notching its 16th record so far this year. The Dow also advanced 1.1 percent. President Trump appeared to call for Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to replace the bank's top economist over his past predictions. Posting on social media today, the president said that Solomon should, quote, go out and get himself a new economist because the bank, he said, made a bad prediction a long time ago on the market and tariffs.
The president asserted that tariffs haven't caused inflation or other issues for the U.S.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:39
2
What are the top headlines introduced at the start of the episode?
2:39–6:20
3
What does the July consumer price report reveal about inflation and tariffs?
6:20–10:28
4
How are tariffs versus consumer spending driving recent price increases?
10:28–13:46