Trump’s Favorite News Anchor Delivers Bleak Inflation Outlook
Fox Business Host Maria Bartiromo said the Producer Price Index report was “troubling.”
President Donald Trump received unpleasant news from a friendly face on Thursday morning.
Fox Business Host Maria Bartiromo was live on air when the Producer Price Index report for July was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, revealing that prices for wholesalers rose last month at the fastest pace in three years.
Bartiromo, who typically finds a way to spin bad news in Trump’s favor, bluntly described the reported inflation “spike” as “troubling.”
July’s spike can be seen to the far-right of the chart provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Economic experts largely agree that Thursday’s report is trouble for the White House.
The PPI index rose 0.9% in July alone—more than four times what was expected, Bartiromo said. For the past year, the index rose 3.3%, the largest annual increase since February.
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The numbers are an indictment of Trump’s tariffs. The Trump administration has insisted that the spike in import taxes would not harm American consumers or businesses, but the numbers say otherwise.
While cost increases have impacted manufacturers more than the general public to date, the PPI index is often an early indicator of what’s to come for consumers.
Christopher Rupkey, the chief economist at FwdBonds, a financial markets research firm, wrote on Thursday that importers will eventually pass on costs to consumers.
“It will only be a matter of time before producers pass their higher tariff-related costs onto the backs of inflation-weary consumers,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
As such, the markets have reacted accordingly.
President Donald Trump has refused to relent on his tariff crusade—despite red flags in jobs reports and, now, the producer price index.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.3% on Tuesday morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fared even worse, losing 229 points, or 0.5%. These dips were captured in real time on Bartiromo’s show.
“Markets are selling off here because the July PPA came in up nine-tenths of a percent worse than the estimated up two-tenths of a percent,” Bartiromo said.
Trump, 79, has pushed forward with his tariffs despite warning signs that they will harm the U.S. economy. Instead of addressing three straight disappointing jobs reports, he instead fired the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He claimed, without merit, that the bureau rigged the numbers for political reasons.
It is unclear who the president will attempt to blame for the latest damning report, which even his MAGA mouthpieces appear hesitant to spin.
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