I'm John Batchel. I welcome my good colleague Elizabeth Peake of the Hill economists at Fox News,

economists much on Fox Business, to comment on the burning number of the moment is inflation.

Washington Post headline, Price Growth held firm in December, capping a year of persistent inflation.

Liz, a very good evening to you, as I understand that headline and then the interpretation,

it is acceptable to Wall Street right now to find that inflation remained 2.7% higher than a year ago.

That is something we've seen for some time.

In other words, no surprises here.

The comment from the Barclays Investment Bank, Chief Economist,

inflation hasn't materially accelerated, but it also isn't showing any convincing signs

of deceleration. Why is this number important? What are we looking for? Good evening to you,

Liz. Good evening, John. Well,

it's important, partly because the midterms are coming up and nothing says, I love you, more than

bringing inflation down. The Democrats are really pounding President Trump for having promised

to bring prices down. Prices haven't come down. Really, realistically, no one really expected that they would,

but there was a hope that with his deregulatory and pro-energy agenda,

that you would see some relief in some certain categories.

And by the way, we are.

Gasoline prices, for example, which probably is one of the most visible and important prices to most Americans,

definitely did come down.

And chances are they're going to continue to come down because oil prices are similarly softening,

and that's on the back of record U.S. production and increased production

from OPEC plus around the world, thanks, I think, to Trump's very strong relationship with

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