CNBC Editor Lauds ‘Very Good News’ About Inflation Under Trump

CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli revealed on Wednesday that inflationary wholesale prices came in “better than expected” in June.

Santelli told his viewers on “Squawk Box” that the latest wholesale inflation report remained “unchanged,” making it the smallest wholesale increase since March. He added that when food and energy are removed from the equation, inflation numbers were below economists’ expectations.

“Strip out food and energy, it remains zero,” Santelli said. “Unchanged, zero. And that would, once again, that would count towards April when we were minus 2/10ths, which by the way was the lowest inflation rate going back to April of 2020. If we strip out food, energy and trade, unchanged. That would also count towards April of this year.”

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The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 2.7% year-over-year in June, which stood roughly in line with expectations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The producer price index (PPI), however, was below expectations on a year-over-year basis when food, energy and trade are excluded, Santelli said.

“That is all very good news. These numbers are less than expectations. They’re sequentially less,” Santelli continued.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected a 0.2% increase in wholesale prices in June, according to CNBC. The unchanged wholesale prices, combined with CPI numbers, indicate that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are having only a slight negative impact on the economy and the price of goods and services.

The corporate media adamantly predicted that the tariffs would cause prices to rise considerably, though inflation fell to a four-year low in May. ABC News cited “experts” who warned that the tariffs “would ratchet up the global trade war” and raise prices, while The Guardian insisted that prices would increase.

A CNBC column from May stated that tariffs were “expected” to worsen inflation. However, inflation has continued to decrease substantially throughout Trump’s second term thus far.

In April, the CPI slowed to its lowest level since February 2021, increasing by 0.2%. In that same month, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, one of the Federal Reserve’s primary inflation measurement models, showed a drop in inflation that had not been seen since March 2021.