{"id":242766,"date":"2025-12-20T13:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T13:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/242766\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T13:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T13:07:08","slug":"us-inflation-data-is-hailed-by-trump-but-does-it-tell-the-full-story-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/242766\/","title":{"rendered":"US inflation data is hailed by Trump but does it tell the full story? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a combative defence of his record on the economy on Wednesday, Donald Trump<\/a> was feeling vindicated on Thursday after November\u2019s inflation data came in cooler than expected.<\/p>\n

But, as noted by the Financial Times, Wall Street was less than impressed, greeting the Bureau of Labor Statistics\u2019 figures with a sceptical shrug. And bond markets barely budged as the missing data diminished the report\u2019s value.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to acknowledge that this data is a mess,\u201d Thomas Simons, chief US economist at Jefferies, was quoted as saying in the FT, adding that there were \u201cencouraging signs of disinflation, but something feels off\u201d.<\/p>\n

The doubts about the data are rooted in the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, long seen as the global gold standard, was closed during the federal shutdown that lasted from early October to mid-November.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably not a good idea to turn off the navigation lights on the US economy for over a month. I think we are learning that you can\u2019t just switch the lights back on and everything immediately becomes clear again,\u201d said Erika McEntarfer, the agency\u2019s former chief who Trump sacked this summer after one underwhelming jobs report. <\/p>\n

The October consumer price index report was suspended entirely. And the November figure, published on Thursday, relied on data collected during the second half of the month \u2013 a period when prices are artificially low due to Black Friday sales. <\/p>\n

As a result, there were incomplete entries and estimated figures in the release.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, during that combative televised prime-time address from the White House, Trump claimed that inflation had \u201cstopped\u201d. In the Oval Office on Thursday, he added that the latest figures showed that there was \u201cpractically no inflation\u201d, even though the annual CPI rose by 2.7 per cent. The Fed<\/a> targets 2 per cent inflation using another gauge.<\/p>\n

With his poll numbers suffering due to cost-of-living<\/a> pressures, and Democrats increasingly bullish about upcoming midterm elections, Trump and his acolytes can ill afford a setback on inflation if subsequent more comprehensive numbers show November to be an outlier.<\/p>\n

As noted by the FT, Omair Sharif of Inflation Insights warned the Trump administration: \u201cThe risk of taking a victory lap … is that it\u2019s going to bounce back next month. You\u2019re going to have to backtrack and talk people down.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a combative defence of his record on the economy on Wednesday, Donald Trump was feeling vindicated on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,2355,2190,356,179,18,182,19,17,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-242766","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cantillon","10":"tag-cost-of-living","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-federal-reserve","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115752052215314418","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}