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I’ve been poking around the month-to-month changes in the consumer price index and calculating annualized Inflation rates. One thing is immediately clear: the vast majority of total inflation since the inauguration of Trump v2 occurred in energy (particularly gasoline and fuel oil) and has happened since the Iran war began. See below.
I pulled data from the monthly CPI reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and aggregated it into one table. I had to estimate October and November 2025, as most of these line items were not published during the shutdown. The blue column holds the annualized CPI values just prior to the Iran war. You’ll note that there does not appear to be any effects from the “crippling” Trump tariffs. The last two columns are the annualized rates just for the 8 months since the Iran war started, and a total annualized rate that covers the whole 22-month period.
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If you don't attribute any of the inflation to Trump's tariff war, then what do you attribute it to? We've had slightly higher inflation under Trump than what Biden left us with in his last year in office.
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M2 growth. Inflation is often birthed by excess money creation.
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Trump’s tariffs hit the Midwest harder than anywhere else. The top three destinations for US agricultural exports are Mexico, Canada and China. The top three targets of Trump’s trade war? Mexico, Canada and China.
At one point U.S. soybean exports to China plummeted by over 70%. So there had to be a federal bailout.
And steel tariffs made equipment purchases for farmers harder and harder to make.
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Over 60% of voters disliked tariffs. They probably tipped the outcomes in the Kansas and Iowa US Senate races. Also, the tariffs made the US Senate races in the Canada border states of Michigan, Ohio and Maine unwinnable for the Republican candidates.
Republicans simply can't win as the party that shakes down American businesses and American consumers with high tariffs.
Much of the popularity of the Republican party was based on the idea that they would keep government out of your pocket book. With Trump's high tariffs, that is no longer the case,
Trump started sounding like Bernie Sanders. "You don't really need those things." Ooops.
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The "free trade" 90's left the US getting used and abused by its trade partners. Getting our trade counterparties to level the playing field is going to be a messy affair. They won't surrender their advantages out of the goodness pf their hearts. That's why it's called a "trade war". And like any war, there are casualties - regrettable though they are. But remember, the benefits of inducing our trade partners to adopt a more free-trade posture accrue to this period and all future periods. AS long as the net present value of those benefits outweigh the current costs, it pays off. Its the exact same logic as that for savings and investment. You forgo some current consumption in the hope of additional consumption in the future. But there is no free lunch.
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