Core producer price inflation in 2025 under Trump was actually higher than under Biden in either 2024 or 2023

2025: 3.26%

2024: 2.86%

2023: 2.89%

Way to go, Brownie!

 

2025

2H2025

December 2025

You talkin' to me?

 

Core producer prices have been increasing year over year at 2.9+% for four straight months, but we're supposed to believe inflation is waning

 

Core producer prices, not seasonally adjusted, were up 2.827% year over year in today's report for August 2025

 The climb-down from last month's report for July 2025 at 3.655% year over year was YUGE.

The numbers have been quite volatile for the last four months. 

In today's release, the yoy numbers for Nov 2024 through Mar 2025 remain unchanged from last month's report. The five month average of these for the yoy increase in core wholesale prices has been 3.711%.

Last month the average for April through July came in lower, at 3.144% year over year, but that has now been revised even lower in this month's report, by 2%, to 3.081% yoy.

Combined with the fresh August reading at 2.827% yoy, clearly the trend for the rate increases has been lower overall.

But these levels are far higher than the average 1.629% which prevailed 2012-2020 inclusive. Our new lower August reading is a rate still nearly 74% higher than that.

The wholesale price environment remains highly inflationary compared with the pre-pandemic era.

 

 

 

Today's core wholesale price report breaks the nine-month-string of producer prices increasing year over year at 3% or more, but as always there will be revisions

 Here are the current June 2025 yoy figures for core producer price increases Dec-Jun, followed by the figures reported the previous month, followed by the figures as originally reported:

December 2024: 3.74%, 3.74%, 3.5%

January 2025: 3.92, 3.92, 3.6

February 2025: 3.73, 3.74, 3.4

March 2025: 3.86, 3.91, 3.3

April 2025: 3.13, 3.18, 3.1

May 2025: 3.20, 3.02 (revised up as predicted)

June 2025: 2.60.

 

The optimism of the original figures has been removed by the revisions to Dec-Mar available only but lately.

 

December and January revisions alone still hold fast today, but not thereafter.

 

As always it is important not to press the monthly results too strongly, but the May revised uptick is consistent with a down-up, down-up, down-up pattern which is obviously trending down.

 

Viewed on a semiannual basis, however, we are Wei Tu Hai, and trending Wong Wei Charlie.

 

 

 

 

It's stupid for Trump to riff off today's producer price report and call Jay Powell names because the number is likely to be revised higher, and besides, that's just poor form, old boy

 

 May 2025 core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, were reported today up 3.02% year over year. That will doubtlessly be revised up, especially as we get farther away from May.

Today's chart indicates April was up 3.18% yoy, but was originally reported at 3.1%. The latter was already rounded up, but the former rounds up to 3.2%. We'll see if that gets revised higher in coming months as well.

March was up 3.91% yoy we are told today, but originally it was reported at 3.3%.

February was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.4%.

January was up 3.92%, but originally reported at 3.6%.

December was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.5%.

The average up revision, including April, has been 0.3. 

Be that as it may, we have in the May report nine consecutive months with core producer prices up in excess of 3% year over year.

Meanwhile for the nine years 2012-2020, the average increase was 1.62% yoy. I don't call producer prices rising at a rate 85% higher than that in May 2025 good news. It may be "less bad" news, but that doesn't make it good news.

Trump's a jerk to Powell. Vance is a very polished jerk. Remember his treatment of Zelenskyy? Stephen Miller is a jerk to Rand Paul. If you've seen the Trump cabinet in action, many of whom are political losers, you've seen even more insulting jerks. They may be descendants of the people of Jerkola for all I know, but I can only speculate.

 

 

  

 

Thirteen paragraphs in we learn that last month's wholesale price headline was, well, total fiction

Which means that this headline is what then?

Producer prices report points to softer Fed inflation measure than feared:

A gauge of wholesale prices rose more than expected in January ... Over the past year, the all-items PPI increased 3.5%, well ahead of the central bank’s objective. ...

“Wholesale price growth came in slightly higher than expected for January, and the read for December was adjusted upward,” said Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at personal finance site NerdWallet. “In other words, inflation at the producer level remains high, and one concern is that this inflation could ultimately be passed along to consumers.”

Revisions to the December numbers also complicated the inflation picture, with the gain now put at 0.5%, compared with the 0.2% increase previously reported.

Last month's headline: Inflation watch: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in December, less than expected.

As usual, the truth is under the hood of the polished headline, or maybe next month's polished headline.

 

Nothing looks soft to me in the measures shown below, which are the not-seasonally-adjusted ones.

Overall producer prices are up  0.7% in Jan 2025, and 3.5% year over year. Core producer prices are up 0.5% in Jan 2025, and 3.6% year over year. At least until next month.

 

 

 

More inflation: Core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, have been up four months in a row measured year over year, the last three increases all above 3% yoy

 3.2%, 3.4% . . . and 3.5% year over year now in November 2024.

Overall prices are up 3% yoy in November.

 

Wholesale prices rose 0.4% in November, more than expected:

Final-demand goods prices leaped 0.7% on the month, the biggest move since February of this year. Some 80% of the move came from a 3.1% surge in food prices, according to the BLS.

Within the food category, chicken eggs soared 54.6%, joining an across-the-board acceleration in items such as dry vegetables, fresh fruits and poultry. Egg prices at the retail level swelled 8.2% on the month and were up 37.5% from a year ago, the BLS said in a separate report Wednesday on consumer prices.

 

The Fed is expected still to cut again at the next meeting despite all the evidence pointing to persistently high and increasing inflation, hiding behind the skirts of fear of job losses, a smokescreen for gifting easier money to speculators, and to federal authorities who now need to finance $36.1 trillion in the national debt at lower rates.

20Y and 30Y bonds are revolting, demanding 4.624 and 4.551 as we speak, now the highest yields across the curve, as the short end yields in US Treasury bills come back down to earth.

 

Core producer prices, aka wholesale prices, were up 2.4% year over year in July 2024, overall prices up 2.2%

The little guy at the end of the chain is still getting screwed, just less hard than before.

Reported yesterday: