Producer prices just posted their biggest year-over-year jump since 2022, up 6%.
Core PPI (stripping out food and energy) hit a three-year high. And the ripple effects are already showing up everywhere that matters.
Fuel costs are climbing, pulled higher by geopolitical tensions and supply disruptions.
That’s pushing freight rates up. Trucking costs up. Warehousing up.
When transportation gets expensive, everything gets expensive, because everything has to be moved from somewhere.
Intermediate goods prices, which are the raw materials and components that feed finished products, are rising at their fastest pace in years. That’s the inflation that hasn’t hit shopping carts yet. But it’s coming.
Meanwhile, the Fed is stuck. Too much inflation to cut. Too much economic fragility to hike aggressively.
Consumers are already feeling the squeeze of weak sentiment, eroding real wages, and now higher prices bearing down from above.
