{"id":761494,"date":"2026-07-14T02:05:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T02:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/761494\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T02:05:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T02:05:17","slug":"steep-inflation-could-persist-through-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/761494\/","title":{"rendered":"Steep inflation could persist through 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The consumer price index measured inflation at 4.2%<\/a> in May. The June report comes out Tuesday. But whatever it shows, consumers have been dealing with already. <\/p>\n

Rather than look in the rearview mirror, consumers might be wondering what the future holds. As in, what sort of price changes they\u2019ll be dealing with three, six, nine months from now. Especially because American consumers have had to choke down a lot of big price hikes recently.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot happily, right, but yes, we’ve done it. The consumer, on average, has done it,\u201d said Morgan Stanley Chief U.S. Economist Michael Gapen.<\/p>\n

He said tariffs and higher energy costs due to the war in the Middle East have already been baked into prices. So, he expects inflation to fall to 3.3% by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a period of indigestion, but I think we’re kind of at the peak right now, and we think we’ll be on the other side of it going forward,\u201d Gapen said.<\/p>\n

But the off-again, on-again war<\/a> in the Middle East and the elevated oil prices that have come with it has Daraius Irani, an economist at Townon University, worried about future inflation \u2014 even if the conflict gets resolved tomorrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Iranians \u2026 they may basically launch a rocket at a ship for whatever reason. Now that they realize that they can do it, they feel that they can use it for leverage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Irani said this creates uncertainty for ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>. And since their safety isn\u2019t guaranteed, shippers may have to pay more<\/a> for insurance to account for increased risk.<\/p>\n

This could all trickle down to prices consumers pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not going to be like, \u2018Oh my god, this is so much,\u2019 but it’s just one more added cost,\u201d Irani said.<\/p>\n

Another source of inflation is a worker shortage across certain industries in the U.S. Specifically, ones where immigrants<\/a> make up a big chunk of the labor force, said Fifth Third Commercial Bank Chief U.S. Economist Bill Adams.<\/p>\n

\u201cShortages of workers in agriculture and nursing services, home healthcare services, daycare services. Those are feeding through to inflationary pressures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If inflation does go up, the Federal Reserve could increase interest rates. In that case, not only will goods and services be more expensive, but the cost of borrowing will be, too.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The consumer price index measured inflation at 4.2% in May. The June report comes out Tuesday. But whatever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":761495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,11529,101,2402,58349,325992],"class_list":["post-761494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-consumer-price-index","tag-economy","tag-inflation","tag-price-hikes","tag-tariff-costs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/761495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}