less<\/a> than economists predicted and a major deceleration from 3%, where it was in the fall.<\/p>\nSo, what\u2019s on sale?<\/p>\n
Price growth slowed across several product categories, and some shopping even became cheaper:<\/p>\n
Gas prices dropped by 3.2%, and used car prices dipped 1.8% from the previous month.Monthly food inflation moderated to 0.2% with the prices of beef and eggs\u2014which just recently had everyone feeling like a steak and eggs was a billionaire\u2019s breakfast\u2014dropped 0.4% and 7%, respectively.<\/p>\n
But\u2026some purchases are still giving Americans sticker shock. Airfare got 6.5% pricier, and music streaming services charged subscribers 4.5% more last month. Economists also warn that inflation might appear milder than it really was, in part due to the lingering effects of the government shutdown in October, when economic data collection was paused\u2014leading to guesstimates that might\u2019ve understated housing price growth.<\/p>\n
White House report card<\/p>\n
The cooled inflation comes as affordability is a top focus for the Trump administration amid plummeting consumer confidence. Many economists expected President Trump\u2019s tariffs to turbocharge widespread inflation, but so far, they seem to have contributed to dramatic price bumps for only select imported products, like furniture.<\/p>\n
Still, New York Federal Reserve researchers said this week that American consumers and companies bore 90% of tariff-related costs. And economists say tariffs might still percolate into prices over the next few months, though many are optimistic that inflation will slow further later in the year.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t expect interest rate cuts soon\u2026as analysts say that the Fed will need more data before reducing borrowing costs, so it\u2019s likely to hold rates steady at its next meeting in March.\u2014SK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Similar to that twentysomething cousin you\u2019re meeting for the first time in 10 years, inflation was tamer than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-300317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}