US Consumer Inflation Increases at Fastest Pace

• U.S. consumer prices increased by the most in nearly 1 and a half years in January, with Americans facing higher costs for a range of goods and services, reinforcing the Federal Reserve's message that it was in no rush to resume cutting interest rates amid growing uncertainty over the economy.
• The hotter-than-expected inflation reported by the Labour Department on Wednesday, February 12, 2025, was likely partly due to businesses raising prices at the start of the year, evident in a record surge in the cost of prescription medication and an increase in motor vehicle insurance.
• The consumer price index jumped 0.5% last month, the biggest gain since August 2023, after rising 0.4% in December, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said. Food prices rose 0.4% after increasing 0.3% in December. Grocery store prices surged 0.5%, with the cost of eggs soaring 15.2%, the largest increase since June 2015. That accounted for about two-thirds of the rise in prices at the supermarket.
• The report followed a pattern of CPI numbers overshooting expectations every January, which some economists said suggested that the seasonal adjustment factors, the model used by the government to strip out seasonal fluctuations from the data, were not fully accounting for the one-off turn-of-year price hikes.
• Nonetheless, they said the so-called residual seasonality was not responsible for all of the broad rise in prices, which offered a cautionary note to President Donald Trump's push for tariffs on imported goods that have been panned by economists as inflationary.
• Trump was elected on promises to lower prices for inflation-weary consumers. High inflation could imperil the Trump administration's agenda, including tax cuts, which could overstimulate a healthy economy, and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that are seen causing labour shortages and rising costs such as wages for businesses.
• "The moderation we saw in consumer inflation last summer is no longer visible now," said Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Markets. "The problem for the Fed is this isn't just a one-month event but looks like a real multi-month firming of inflation pressures."

(Source: Reuters)