Robbie G

What’s something you’ll never get tired of eating?

Don’t worry. It’s different this time…😉

Pro-tariff commentators: Look, we imposed tariffs and there was no fundamental change in the inflation trend line Careful Fed analysis: Our approach to assess the effects of these new U.S. tariffs on consumer prices accounts for their sequential introduction and leverages variation in tariff rates across products and regions of origin. As such, the first step of our empirical analysis is to produce a panel dataset capturing the evolution of tariffs for each commodity-region pair in the BEA's GVC IO tables described earlier. Given the complex nature of the tariffs enacted in 2025, the construction of this dataset is not a trivial task. We outline how we do this below. We have devoted significant effort to compile a measure of tariffs that adheres as close as possible to the letter of the statutes implementing them. We now determine how much prices should be affected by tariffs in theory, and later we will assess whether realized price changes align with these theoretical predictions. As our analysis aims to account for the timing of the tariffs in table 1, we build a panel dataset that captures monthly changes in our theoretical tariff effects. ...our analysis below will empirically assess whether prices have increased as predicted by the theoretical measures We estimate that the tariff changes in table 1 increased core PCE prices by 0.8% through February 2026 and that pass-through is effectively complete. Given that the entire effect quantified above is driven by tariff effects on core goods PCE prices, and core goods represent about a quarter of overall core PCE, our tariff effects can equivalently be stated as boosting core goods PCE prices through February 2026 by 3.1%. Under our baseline specification (blue line), tariffs can explain essentially all of the excess core goods inflation relative to pre-pandemic trends starting in 2025, as we illustrated in Figure 5. Moreover, because the estimated pass-through from tariffs is largely complete, core goods inflation would be expected to return soon to pre-pandemic levels. However, if the smaller tariff effects obtained under the alternative specification (red line) are closer to the true effects, then other factors must have also contributed to keeping core goods inflation above its pre-pandemic levels in 2025. Determining the nature and persistence of these additional factors would then be relevant for the core goods inflation outlook, but such an analysis is beyond the scope of this note.

JPMorgan lifts price target on Chevron to $216 from $181