MARKET NEWS

BY Lee Moran

Economist Justin Wolfers noted Wednesday that while President Donald Trump may have just rolled back tariffs on some imported grocery items such as coffee and bananas, most tariffs remain in place — and so do the damaging economic consequences of them.

“So far we’ve seen rising inflation — well, not really rising, sorry, persistently high inflation — and that’s one of the things keeping interest rates high,” Wolfers, an economics professor at the University of Michigan, explained on ABC News.

Broadly speaking, tariffs disrupt supply chains and “create what economists call a supply shock,” he said, before warning:

“We’ve seen the early stages of what economists call stagflation: the ‘flation’ part is inflation, which you’ve all felt at the grocery store, and the ‘stag’ part is stagnation — rising unemployment and slower economic growth than we otherwise would have.”

Trump had vowed on the 2024 campaign trail to tackle inflation on the first day of his second term.

In recent weeks, he has falsely claimed “every price is down” and said that “everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden.”

Prices, though, are rising during his second administration.

Wolfers tackled Trump’s claim last week, calling it “such a lie that I worry there’s literally a break with reality inside the man’s mind.”

The economist pointed to Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that “almost every category of goods or services sees prices rising.”