Here’s a visual sit-rep on prices for Americans.
Figure 1: CPI – all urban (blue), CPI food at home (green), AIER Everyday Price Index (tan), all in logs 2024M12=0. Source: BLS, AIER, and author’s calculations.
It is interesting that the AIER’s Everyday Price Index, aimed at measuring the costs of nondeferrable expenses – has risen faster than the CPI.
The USDA Economic Research Service does not project a decline in food at home (aka groceries) prices.
Figure 2: CPI for food at home (black), USDA Economic Research Service forecast from January (blue square), from February (red triangle), from March (green inverted triangle), on log scale. Source: BLS via FRED, ERS, author’s calculations.
Since Figure 2 is drawn with a vertical log scale, the steepening trajectories indicate upward revisions in the trajectory of prices.
How’s it going? Housing starts fell 11.4% in March, with singles down 14.2% and large multies flat. There could be a residual seasonal adjustment issue – singles were down sharply in March 2024, as well, over 15% m/m. But weakness is clearly not just a problem with seasonal adjustment. After a bad month a year ago, single starts were barely up at all from a year ago this March. Building permits rose in March, but single-family permits fell.
This bad performance came before the Orange Crisis ™ was fully upon us, but is consistent with an overall slowing of economic activity so far this year.
Weaker starts are also consistent with a recent slide in home builder confidence:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/nahb-housing-market-index
Home builders expect tariffs to add $10,900 to the average cost of building a home, by the way.
Remind me: aren’t we in a housing shortage? And wasn’t the cost of housing one of the big issues for voters last November?
All three of the worst features of the felon-in-chief administration rolled into one story – ignoring the rule of law, capricious and ill-informed policy decisions and putting our future at risk by fostering climate change. First, the good news:
“Clean power sources generated more than half of all U.S. electricity supplies for the first time in March, accounting for 51% of all utility-scale electricity output that month, according to data from energy think tank Ember.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-power-system-primed-scale-new-clean-milestone-april-maguire-2025-04-17/
So naturally:
“The Trump administration’s decision to halt construction of Equinor’s…Empire Wind 1 farm off the coast of New York late on Wednesday sent shockwaves through the offshore wind industry, raising concerns that fully-permitted developments representing billions in investment are not safe.”
“Stopping work on the fully federally permitted Empire Wind 1 offshore project should send chills across all industries investing in and holding contracts with the United States Government,” said Liz Burdock, the CEO of industry group Oceantic Network, after Burgum’s order.
“Preventing a permitted and financed energy project from moving forward sends a loud and clear message to all businesses – beyond those in the offshore wind industry – that their investment in the U.S. is not safe.”
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/trump-order-halt-ny-wind-project-stuns-offshore-industry-threatens-other-2025-04-17/
“All three of the worst features of the felon-in-chief administration rolled into one story – ignoring the rule of law, capricious and ill-informed policy decisions and putting our future at risk by fostering climate change.”
Make it all four of the worst features: this story also reflects Trump’s use of the power of the US government to carry out personal retribution.
He has hated wind power ever since he learned that his golf course in Scotland was going to get a wind power farm off its shore. https://www.fastcompany.com/91264701/why-donald-trump-hates-wind-power
Lets not forget mortgage rates were supposed to go back to an affordable 2%.
Oh, and don’t forget trump would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. Last i saw russia was still bombing the civilian population as a war criminal.
And all this antisemitism argument against harvard is simply trump abusing the jewish population to achieve his vendetta against the ivies for not admitting him in the first place. If he was truly against antisemitism, he would have prosecuted rather than support the white nationalist in charlottesville and elsewhere in his first term. Instead we heard crickets and defense of those people.