A broken record... inflation lower than expected for July.

The CPI came in at 2.7% which was lower than the consensus of 2.8%.

Tariffs did appear to show up in several categories.

For instance, household furnishings and supplies showed a 0.7% increase after rising 1% in June. However, apparel prices were up just 0.1% and core commodity prices increased just 0.2%. Canned fruits and vegetables, which generally are imported and also sensitive to tariffs, were flat.

“The tariffs are in the numbers, but they’re certainly not jumping out hair on fire at this point,” former White House economist Jared Bernstein said on CNBC. Bernstein served under former President Joe Biden.

The report comes at both a critical time for the economy and the BLS itself, which has come under Trump’s criticism for what he has charged is political bias against him. Trump fired the prior BLS commissioner after a surprisingly weak July nonfarm payrolls report earlier this month, and on Monday said he would nominate E.J. Antoni, a critic of the bureau, as the new chief.

The market has reacted with a boom today. Apparently this was good news, as much as some will desperately attempt to spin it negatively. As you can see, many are still pushing the concept that tariffs will have a massive effect on inflation, even as they so far have not. The idea is to continuously talk about the tariffs, even if they seem to be having a minimal effect.

At issue is the reality that most of these vendors and buyers are in large part splitting portions of the cost of these tariffs. The idea that tariffs somehow behave differently than any other tax is a flaw pushed by liberals who seem to believe that American businesses will eat all the costs of corporate taxes, but that somehow taxes on foreign imports will be passed directly along to the consumer. There is absolutely zero reason to believe this, mind you, but that is the argument, none-the-less. If you describe tariffs as a corporate tax on foreign businesses doing business in the US, those liberal economists will cover their ears and start screaming... nananana I can't hear you... nananana.

So what once was going to create an instant inflation beyond anything we could imagine is now being touted as something more clever and will apparently hide the true effects till sometime next month, or the month after, or even next year. The lack of evidence of any current inflation cause by tariffs is just further proof that they will be backloaded to harm us further down the road.