French inflation cools to 0.6% in May<\/p>\n
Cheese on display in a delicacy store on May 23, 2025, in Cannes, France.<\/p>\n
Lorenzo Franzoni | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Provisional data from Insee, France’s statistics office, pointed to annual harmonized inflation increasing by 0.6% in May.<\/p>\n
It marked a slowdown from April, when French inflation rose by 0.9% on an annual basis.<\/p>\n
Slowing inflation could be attributed to a decline in the price of services, Insee said as it released the data on Tuesday, alongside contracting energy costs. Food prices were bucking the trend and increasing in France.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Chloe Taylor<\/p>\n
European stocks rise in early trade<\/p>\n
European stock markets have broadly risen in the first 15 minutes of the trading day.<\/p>\n
The Stoxx Europe 600<\/a> index opened 0.2% higher, while the FTSE 100<\/a> posted a gain of 0.8%.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, France’s CAC 40<\/a> declined by 0.2% and Germany’s DAX<\/a> held steady.<\/p>\n \u2014 Ganesh Rao<\/p>\n German consumers feel more optimistic \u2014 but they\u2019re hesitant to spend as tariffs threat lingers<\/p>\n People walk past stores in Berlin’s Steglitz district on May 24, 2025.<\/p>\n Carsten Koall | Getty Images<\/p>\n German consumer sentiment improved in May, the GfK Consumer Climate report showed on Tuesday, but U.S. tariffs policies were found to be dampening willingness to spend.<\/p>\n The report marked the third consecutive month in which the index moved higher, driven in part by slowing inflation and “good wage settlements” \u2014 but despite the improvement, sentiment remained low and consumers were hesitant to make discretionary purchases, analysts said.<\/p>\n “The unpredictable customs and trade policy of the US government, turbulence on the stock markets and fears of a third consecutive year of stagnation are reasons why the consumer climate remains weak,” Rolf B\u00fcrkl, consumer expert at the NIM, said in a statement on Tuesday. “In view of the general economic situation, people seem to think it advisable to save.”<\/p>\n The GfK Consumer Climate, which surveyed around 2,000 German consumers between May 1 and May 12,\u00a0was jointly published by NIQ and the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions.<\/p>\n \u2014 Chloe Taylor<\/p>\n Some UK retailers are lowering prices to get ahead of tariffs, BRC says<\/p>\n A home appliances store in Chelmsford, U.K., on Jan. 28, 2025.<\/p>\n Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images<\/p>\n Diving deeper into the British Retail Consortium’s inflation data, it appears that some U.K. retailers may be strategically lowering prices in a bid to get ahead of looming U.S. tariffs.<\/p>\n “Non-food prices remained in deflation, but this slowed in categories such as fashion and furniture as retailers began to unwind heavy promotional activity,” BRC chief Helen Dickinson said in a statement on Tuesday. “Prices were falling faster for electricals as retailers tried to encourage spending before any potential knock-on impact from U.S. tariffs.”<\/p>\n In the non-food category, prices contracted by 1.5% year on year in May, the BRC’s data showed.<\/p>\n U.S. President Donald Trump recently threatened a 25% tariff<\/a> on Apple in a bid to force the tech giant into moving production into the United States \u2014 a move that some have cautioned would drastically raise prices<\/a> of the company’s products. Last month, the U.K. and the U.S. agreed on the framework for a trade deal<\/a> \u2014 but uncertainties remain<\/a> around how the Trump administration’s tariffs policies will affect wider supply chains.<\/p>\n \u2014 Chloe Taylor<\/p>\n U.K. food inflation jumps for fourth month in a row<\/p>\n Food inflation in the U.K. rose by 2.8% year-on-year in May, according to the British Retail Consortium, marking the fourth consecutive month of price rises. \u00a0<\/p>\n The figure was up from 2.6% year-on-year growth in April, and above the three-month average of 2.6%.<\/p>\n Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive of the BRC, said in a statement on Tuesday that fresh food prices were the main driver of the price rises, with wholesale beef prices increasing. She argued that increased costs being leveraged on businesses<\/a> were having an inflationary impact.<\/p>\n “With retailers now absorbing the additional \u00a35bn in costs from April’s increased Employer National Insurance contributions and National Living Wage, it is no surprise that inflation is rearing its head once again,” she said.<\/p>\n \u2014 Chloe Taylor<\/p>\n European stock markets expected to open slightly lower<\/p>\n European stock markets are expected to have a mostly negative open on Tuesday.<\/p>\n Futures contracts tied to the Stoxx Europe 600<\/a> index point to a 0.2% loss at the open, while Germany’s DAX<\/a> is poised to be in the red by 0.1%. Meanwhile, France’s CAC 40<\/a> is expected to open flat, and the U.K.’s FTSE 100<\/a> is bucking the trend with a 0.8% gain.<\/p>\n \u2014 Ganesh Rao<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French inflation cools to 0.6% in May Cheese on display in a delicacy store on May 23, 2025,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4959,51,3085,1830,2441,1831,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-135436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-breaking-news-markets","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-business-news","11":"tag-earnings","12":"tag-markets","13":"tag-stock-markets","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114578825070411556","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}