US wholesale prices unexpectedly fell last month by the most since October 2023, restrained by energy costs and adding to evidence of tame inflation leading up to a wave of tariffs.
The producer price index (PPI) fell 0.4 percent from a month earlier following a revised 0.1 percent gain in February, a US Bureau of Labor Statistics report released yesterday showed.
The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 0.2 percent gain.
Excluding food and energy, a measure of underlying wholesale inflation, the PPI eased 0.1 percent compared with expectations for a 0.3 percent gain.
The figures follow a bureau report on Thursday that showed consumer prices fell last month for the first time since 2020.
However, economists expect inflation to accelerate over the remainder of the year, as US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imported goods filter through into higher prices for businesses and households.
Analysts pay close attention to the PPI, because some of its components are used to calculate the US Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation that is based on the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index.
Those categories were generally favorable in March: airfares fell 0.4 percent and hospital services costs rose at a slower rate. The PCE report would be published later this month.
In early February, the Trump administration put in place an additional 10 percent levy on goods imported from China. Since then, in a series of announcements after retaliation by Beijing, the US president raised the total duty on Chinese goods to 145 percent.
Earlier this week, Trump announced a 90-day pause on higher tariffs on most US trading partners, opting instead for a 10 percent tariff on imports. In addition, higher duties on aluminum and steel went into effect March 12.
The overall impact on prices from these actions might show up more clearly with the release of the April PPI data next month.
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