Well, howdy there, internet people, it's bell again. So today, we're going to talk about the

Fed inflation estimate being even worse news for Trump. So, the Cleveland Fed's Center for

Inflation Research is kind of our one-stop shop for early inflation estimates, much like

the Atlanta Fed's GDP Nowcast, which we've talked about and used before. We'll start by going over

the Cleveland Fed's inflation estimates for May. It gives both Consumer Price Index or CPI, which is the one you hear about

in the medium most times, and the personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, which is what the Fed actually

uses when making policy decisions. The Fed suggests the year-over-year CPI change is 3.89% and the PCE is 3.93%. The quarterly

annualized percent change is over 5% for both. These extra costs Americans are paying are in part due to Trump's

various tariff schemes, and then in part due to Trump's unnecessary war with Iran. If Trump ended his

Iran war today, the price shock due to Trump's inability to keep the straight open will go on

for months and months to come. Gas prices come down slowly and the inflationary shocks from

elevated energy prices show slowly. So you end up with extended periods of elevated inflation. Since the tariffs are

adding continued inflationary pressure, and Trump is still threatening even more tariffs,

we're going to keep getting hit. This is a lot like his first term, except it's hitting during his

term instead of during the next guys.

In a little more than a month, the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve will meet again.

Trump wants interest rates down.

But during the last meeting, a full 25% of the committee dissented against

hinting that more interest rate cuts were coming in the future. And now, inflation is going

up even higher, which makes interest rate cuts even less likely. Beyond that, Trump fired the calculator over a bad jobs report, and since then they've

been decidedly better.

The problem for Trump is that if jobs reports say the job market is doing well, that

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