Inflation Surges Past Fed Target as Prices Hit Consumers Hard
Intra-Party Split Detected
Within the Fed and economic commentariat, disagreement exists over how aggressively to raise rates: some officials (e.g., Waller) push for a larger hike, while others (e.g., Hammack) favor a gradual approach. This isn't strictly partisan but reflects differing views among policymakers regardless of political affiliation, with some economic voices on the right also split between blaming tariffs/Iran war versus broader inflationary trends.
Left says
- •Core inflation pressures are broadening beyond energy, with services, medical care, car insurance, and airline fares all pushing core CPI up for a third straight month, showing the problem isn't just the Iran war or gas prices.
- •Wages have now failed to keep pace with inflation for three consecutive months, meaning working families are losing real purchasing power even amid a strong labor market.
- •Voters delivered a clear midterm verdict on affordability, with nearly nine in ten citing cost of living as a major factor, and Democrats now face the harder task of translating that mandate into relief given limited policy tools to reverse years of price increases.
- •The AI investment boom and tariff policy are compounding the Iran war's effects on prices, meaning this inflation problem predates and extends beyond any single geopolitical event.
Right says
- •Producer prices surged 6.5% year-over-year, the highest since late 2022, signaling businesses are absorbing cost increases that will likely be passed on to consumers in the months ahead.
- •The Federal Reserve has failed to hit its 2% inflation target for nearly six years, and officials themselves admit the trend is now moving in the wrong direction rather than improving.
- •Inflation and economic mismanagement were central to the midterm losses, with voters most concerned about the economy swinging sharply toward Democrats as a rebuke of the current trajectory.
- •A December rate hike is now viewed as nearly certain by markets, with some Fed officials even floating a larger-than-usual half-point increase given how persistently core inflation has run hot.
Common Take
High Consensus- The October Consumer Price Index rose 0.4%, with core CPI (excluding food and energy) up 0.3% for a third consecutive month.
- Inflation has run hotter than expected for three straight months, defying earlier predictions that price pressures were easing.
- The Iran war, tariffs, and energy market disruptions are all contributing to elevated prices, alongside other structural factors.
- The Federal Reserve is very likely to raise interest rates again at its December meeting given the persistence of inflation.
The Arguments
Right argues
Producer prices surged 6.5% year-over-year, the highest since late 2022, which signals that businesses are absorbing cost increases that will likely be passed on to consumers in the months ahead, meaning the worst of consumer inflation may still be coming.
Left counters
PPI's spike is heavily concentrated in energy and tariff-driven input costs tied to a specific geopolitical shock, while core CPI excluding food and energy rose a more modest 2.8%, suggesting the pass-through to consumers may be partial rather than a harbinger of a new broad-based surge.
Left argues
Core inflation pressures are broadening well beyond energy and the Iran war, with services, medical care, car insurance, and airline fares all pushing core CPI up for a third straight month, showing this is a structural affordability problem rather than a temporary geopolitical blip.
Right counters
Even if the composition is broadening, the Fed's own officials and the PPI data point directly to the Iran war and tariffs as significant accelerants, and Chicago Fed President Goolsbee himself called the trend 'borderline disturbing' and moving in 'the wrong way' only recently — undercutting the claim that this is simply a long-simmering structural issue unrelated to current policy shocks.
Right argues
The Federal Reserve has failed to hit its 2% inflation target for nearly six years, and officials themselves now admit the trend is deteriorating rather than improving, which is a damning indictment of the current economic trajectory regardless of which administration bears responsibility.
Left counters
A six-year failure to hit target spans multiple administrations and includes pandemic-era supply shocks entirely disconnected from current policy, so using it to indict the present moment obscures more than it reveals about what's actually driving the latest acceleration.
Left argues
Wages have now failed to keep pace with inflation for three consecutive months despite a strong labor market, meaning working families are losing real purchasing power even when headline job numbers look healthy — a sign that growth alone isn't solving the affordability crisis.
Right counters
A strong labor market with hot inflation is precisely the dynamic that gives the Fed justification for aggressive rate hikes, including a possible half-point increase in December, suggesting the tools exist to correct course — the real question is whether current fiscal and foreign policy choices are undermining those efforts.
Right argues
Inflation and economic mismanagement were central to the midterm losses, with voters most concerned about the economy swinging sharply toward Democrats as a clear rebuke of the status quo trajectory under the current administration.
Left counters
Voters citing affordability as their top concern is itself a rebuke of whoever currently holds power and oversaw the price surges tied to tariffs and the Iran war, and Democrats explicitly campaigned on lowering costs — meaning the same data the right cites as a mandate against mismanagement is equally read as a mandate for policy change away from current trade and foreign policy approaches.
Challenge Questions
These questions target genuine internal contradictions — meant to provoke honest reflection.
Right asks Left
“If the left attributes inflation primarily to structural forces like the AI boom and pre-existing trends that 'predate' the Iran war, why does the same synopsis simultaneously treat the Iran war as a major driver compounding the problem — which is it?”
Left asks Right
“If producer price inflation is being cited as proof of mismanagement under the current administration, how does the right reconcile that with blaming a six-year, multi-administration failure to hit the 2% target as evidence of a deeper systemic problem rather than a recent policy failure?”
Outlier Report
Left Fringe
Progressive commentators like Robert Reich and some MMT-aligned economists (e.g., Stephanie Kelton followers) who argue inflation is primarily corporate greed/price-gouging driven rather than monetary or supply-side, representing roughly 15-20% of the left and downplaying any Fed rate-hike necessity.
Right Fringe
Figures like Peter Navarro and some MAGA-aligned commentators who argue tariffs and the Iran war are not meaningfully inflationary and blame the Fed or 'deep state' economic data manipulation instead, representing roughly 10-15% of the right and dismissing PPI/CPI reports as politically motivated.
Noise Assessment
Significant amplification from financial media (CNBC, Bloomberg, Axios) and political accounts framing every data point as validation of pre-existing narratives, while the median voter's actual view is simpler: prices are too high and whoever is in charge should fix it, regardless of technical causal debates.
Sources (9)
<div>Data: Axios analysis of FactSet data; Note: Correlation over preceding 30 trading sessions between daily change in West Texas Intermediate crude and change in 10-year U.S. Treasury yield; Chart: Neil Irwin/Axios</div><p>For much of this year, on any given day, you could look at the price of oil and correctly guess what happened to bond yields. In the last few weeks, that correlation has evaporated. </p><p><strong>Why it matters: </strong>It's a sign that growth risks may be supplanting inflation worries as the dominant economic concern.</p><hr /><p><strong>State of play: </strong>It's not obvious whether an energy supply shock should affect inflation or growth more.</p><ul><li>On the one hand, more expensive fuel can ripple through prices for everything else. On the other, more expensive energy acts like a tax on consumers and businesses that consume it.</li><li>Since the attack on Iran in <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/02/28/iran-attack-trump-us-israel-strikes" target="_blank">late February</a>, markets have treated the former concern as the central dynamic in the global economy.</li></ul><p><strong>Zoom in: </strong>As such, on days when oil futures pointed to higher prices, bonds almost always sold off and their yields — which move in the opposite direction from their prices — rose.</p><ul><li>Traders were pricing in a world where inflation is higher for longer, and central banks react by raising rates more — and betting, implicitly, that growth would prove resilient despite the energy price headwind.</li><li>For the 30 trading days ended Sept. 10, the correlation between the one-day move in West Texas Intermediate crude and 10-year U.S. Treasury yield reached a stunning 77%.</li><li>The Financial Times <a href="https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/eda7f797-0f7e-4739-a652-47d495e219a7" target="_blank">noted in late September</a> that the correlation was the highest it had been since the Persian Gulf War of the early 1990s.</li></ul><p><strong>Yes, but:</strong> Now, that correlation has collapsed — and is about <em>negative</em> 10% over the last 30 trading days. In other words, on days when oil rises, it's more likely than not that bond yields fall.</p><p><strong>Between the lines: </strong>It's probably not a coincidence that this shift has occurred at the same time cracks have appeared in the debt market that's financing the AI buildout.</p><ul><li>As long as the AI and data center boom was powering ahead, seemingly impervious to energy price shocks or bubble fears, the inflationary impact of higher oil prices dominated the economic outlook.</li><li>But with that sector <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/10/16/wall-street-limit-ai-spending-debt" target="_blank">wobbling,</a> the economy may be more vulnerable to a growth slowdown as higher prices for gasoline, diesel fuel and other energy products weigh on activity.</li><li>And that's giving the Federal Reserve more breathing room to avoid rate hikes.</li></ul><p><strong>Of note: </strong>This inversion of the relationship is clearly on the mind of the Fed's leadership, even if they aren't ready to draw firm conclusions about its implications.</p><ul><li>In his <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCpresconf20261028.pdf" target="_blank">news conference two weeks ago</a>, chairman Kevin Warsh pointed to "a stable correlation" between oil prices and interest rates for much of this year, and while noting that he is not the author of a Wall Street newsletter, he nonetheless mused on the relationship at some length.</li></ul><p><strong>What they're saying: </strong>"That correlation has been quite strong, until very recently where you've seen oil prices continue to move up, largely due to geopolitical events," he said. "But what's happened? Interest rates have rolled over to the downside."</p><ul><li>"To the extent that oil prices were to move lower, again, probably due to geopolitical events, that's something that we're going to have to interrogate. What are the effects on the Fed's dual mandate? What are the effects on financial market prices, and what are we going to do about it?"</li><li>"But that's a hypothetical, and in fact, if we look at financial market prices, futures prices for oil, they've moved up over the course of the last several weeks, and I can't help but take note of that too."</li></ul><p><strong>The bottom line: </strong>If this macro regime change persists, it suggests the Fed has more leeway to move with caution on further rate hikes, no matter what happens in the Strait of Hormuz.</p>
Drivers are starting to see some relief from high fuel prices. For the first time in months, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has dipped below $4, according to AAA. The price crossed below the $4 threshold on Tuesday, and is currently down to a national average of $3.94 for a gallon of regular. Prices have dipped about 40 cents over the past month, with much of that decline happening in the past two weeks.
<div></div><p>Oil markets are heading into an unusual period as the Iran conflict remains in dangerous limbo: The supply crunch is easing, but prices could stay stubbornly high.</p><p><strong>Why it matters:</strong> While gasoline prices have<strong> </strong>dropped lately, don't expect pre-war levels anytime soon even as Middle East exports fitfully recover.</p><hr /><ul><li>Getting oil out of the region is expensive, which filters down to consumers.</li><li>The threat of new attacks can keep oil costs higher, too, thanks to the <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/10/26/oil-stocks-risks-brent" target="_blank">risk premium</a> embedded in prices.</li></ul><p><strong>The big picture: </strong>Traders are watching the state of potential diplomacy — and the possibility of a prolonged stalemate.</p><ul><li>Oil prices jumped yesterday after <a href="https://truthsocial.com/%40realDonaldTrump/posts/117603621591099598" target="_blank">President Trump said</a> on his Truth Social that "we don't need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed."</li></ul><p><strong>Driving the news:</strong> Crude oil export levels bounce around, but have recently returned to pre-war levels at times, barrel-tracking firms and analysts say.</p><ul><li>Yet shipping threats will "persist in 2027," and attacks spiked last month (<em>see the chart<strong> </strong>above</em>), per political risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft.</li><li>A new agreement on navigating the Strait of Hormuz would just be a piece of the puzzle — if it ever happens.</li></ul><p><strong>"The threat of a renewed wave </strong>of shipping attacks will remain high as long as the underlying confrontation over Iran's nuclear and missile programmes remains unresolved," the firm's analysis states.</p><p><strong>Catch up quick:</strong> Tracking how much supply is returning is a moving target, and higher production from countries outside the Middle East — including the U.S. — matters too.</p><ul><li>The oil market is "showing tentative signs of rebalancing, with global oil supplies surpassing demand for the first time since the outbreak of the war in Iran," the International Energy Agency <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-november-2026" target="_blank">said this morning</a>.</li><li>Crude oil exports from the Persian Gulf region rose to 82% of pre-war levels last month, though recovery of refined product shipments is weaker, its monthly analysis states. </li></ul><p><strong>With supply rising</strong> and oil demand lowered by the conflict, IEA predicts the global market will return to a surplus this quarter.</p><p><strong>Yes, but:</strong> Insurance and shipping costs are elevated, and that puts upward pressure on prices.</p><ul><li>"Both Iran and the Houthis have demonstrated that they can severely restrict oil flows from the region using a range of attacks and tactics. This is something that will have to be priced in," Torbjorn Soltvedt, a senior Verisk analyst, tells me via email.</li><li>And there's no guarantee that higher tanker transit and increased shipments through pipelines that avoid the Strait of Hormuz won't be curtailed by fresh attacks.</li></ul><p><strong>Zoom in: </strong>Goldman Sachs estimates that the tanker market's "adaptation to Mideast shipping risks" accounts for most of the $20-per-barrel year-over-year increase in average costs for shipping oil.</p><ul><li>These freight rates reflect vessel availability, insurance, fuel cost, logistics, travel distances and more.</li></ul><p><strong>What we're watching:</strong> It's unclear how much more oil can keep leaving the region in the near term, as intermittent attacks keep happening.</p><ul><li>"The current recovery may be close to the limit of what the existing logistics system can sustain," HSBC's Kim Fustier said in a recent note.</li></ul><p><strong>The bottom line:</strong> "We would not equate [oil] exports with normality," Fustier writes.</p><ul><li>She cited substantial volumes of well production that remain curtailed, lower refined product shipments, and "and the cost of sustaining exports."</li></ul><p><em>Sign up <a href="https://www.axios.com/signup/axios-future-of-energy" target="_blank">here</a> for Axios' Future of Energy newsletter.</em></p>
<div>Data: FactSet; Chart: Courtenay Brown/Axios</div><p>Inflation is no longer confined to a handful of trouble spots. Now, Federal Reserve officials are starting to question whether raising <a href="https://www.axios.com/economy/federal-reserve" target="_blank">interest rates</a> gradually will be enough to contain it.</p><p><strong>Why it matters:</strong> Fed officials had hoped that a relatively modest series of interest rate hikes would be enough to bring inflation under control — more a recalibration than a tightening campaign.</p><ul><li>But stubbornly high — and increasingly widespread — price pressures are raising the possibility of a more prolonged tightening campaign, with no clear endpoint in sight.</li></ul><hr /><ul><li>That would leave the Fed facing a more difficult balancing act: raising rates enough to contain inflation without unnecessarily damaging the economy.</li></ul><p><strong>What they're saying: </strong>"We have got a real inflation issue on our hands that has been developing — and we're going to have to deal with that," Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee, who called the inflation data "borderline disturbing," <a href="https://ga.pbs-video.pbs.org/captions/newshour/98127286-29f3-44ae-8de1-8e7749c24caf/captions/kgRPDD_caption_en.txt" target="_blank">said late Tuesday</a>.</p><p><strong>Driving the news:</strong> Treasury yields are surging after Tuesday's hot inflation report and <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/11/10/federal-reserve-rate-hikes" target="_blank">hawkish commentary</a> from Fed officials — including governor Christopher Waller, who raised the prospect of a supersized rate hike next month.</p><ul><li>Short-term yields have risen more sharply than longer-term yields, a sign that investors expect the Fed may need to raise rates more aggressively than previously anticipated.</li><li>The yield on the two-year Treasury note is still marching higher after surging 17 basis points on Tuesday, which was the biggest one-day surge since April 2025 — when markets were reeling from the "liberation day" tariffs.</li><li>The yield on the 10-year Treasury note jumped about 8 basis points, putting it back above 5%. </li><li>Financial markets see a December rate hike as virtually certain, according to CME FedWatch. Expectations for next year are trending higher, with traders now pricing in two additional quarter-point hikes by June.</li></ul><p><strong>The big picture: </strong>Measures designed to strip out unusually large price swings suggest that underlying inflation pressures are gaining pace.</p><ul><li>The Cleveland Fed's <a href="https://www.clevelandfed.org/indicators-and-data/median-cpi" target="_blank">trimmed-mean</a> Consumer Price Index —which filters out unusually large price swings to give a clearer picture of underlying inflation — rose 0.4% in October, the largest monthly increase since May.</li><li>The <a href="https://www.atlantafed.org/research-and-data/data/sticky-price-cpi" target="_blank">Atlanta Fed's sticky-price CPI</a>, which tracks prices that typically change, slowly accelerated to a 4.7% annualized pace in October, its fastest since February 2025.</li><li>More than three-quarters of the consumer price basket saw prices rise at an annualized rate exceeding 2% in October, the largest share since August 2022, Charles Schwab's head of macro research Kevin Gordon <a href="https://x.com/KevRGordon/status/2120152422639149302?a=G9dYsSijIUjA3x7Qh2Y&s=20" target="_blank">posted on X</a>.</li></ul><p><strong>Yes, but: </strong>The Fed may have reason to proceed cautiously even against the backdrop of stubborn inflation. </p><ul><li>Rising bond yields and a sell-off in technology stocks (revived again by <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/11/12/nvidia-jensen-huang-out" target="_blank">the exit of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang</a>) are already tightening financial conditions — potentially doing some of the work of higher interest rates.</li><li>Fed governor Michelle Bowman said in <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bowman20261110a.htm" target="_blank">a speech</a> that falling stock prices, higher borrowing costs and a stronger dollar could weigh on economic growth, particularly in sectors already struggling with high interest rates.</li><li>Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack, who dissented against the decision to hold rates steady last month, said she still supported a more gradual approach to raising rates. "It's less disruptive to the overall economy than moving in sharper, more aggressive movements," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2NTuV0xjJs" target="_blank">she said Thursday morning</a>.</li></ul><p><strong>What to watch: </strong>Some of the forces driving inflation higher this year — including tariffs and the Iran war — were expected to be temporary. But the risk that they will prove more persistent keeps resurfacing.</p><ul><li>President Trump <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-threatens-double-tariffs-mexico-migrant-caravans-not-stopped" target="_blank">threatened on Thursday morning</a> to double tariffs on Mexican imports unless the nation stops a caravan of migrants from reaching the U.S. border.</li><li>Trump also said the U.S. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-12/oil-jumps-after-trump-says-us-doesn-t-need-deal-with-iran" target="_blank">doesn't need a deal with Iran</a>, raising fresh questions about how soon the conflict (and the disruption to global energy supplies) might end.</li></ul>
<p>America's inflation problem is stubborn, broadening out and showing no sign of letting up.</p><p><strong>Why it matters:</strong> October marked the third straight month of hotter-than-expected <a href="https://www.axios.com/economy/inflation" target="_blank">inflation</a>, defying repeated predictions over the last couple of years that price pressures were finally about to ease. </p><ul><li>In this sixth consecutive year of steep price increases, consumers are finding there is nowhere to hide from inflation. </li><li>The Iran war has added to the pain, but other factors — tariffs and the AI investment boom — have also put upward pressure on costs, complicating an affordability problem that long predates the conflict.</li></ul><p><strong>What they're saying:</strong> "Today's inflation report is a warning shot," Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, wrote Tuesday morning.</p><ul><li>"Coming just a week after the midterm elections exposed the depth of voters' concerns about affordability, the message for the Fed is uncomfortable but clear: The inflation fight is not finished," Shah wrote.</li></ul><p><strong>Driving the news: </strong>The headline Consumer Price Index rose 0.4% in October, down slightly from a 0.6% surge the previous month. </p><ul><li>Core CPI — which excludes volatile food and energy costs — climbed 0.3% for the third consecutive month, a sign that underlying inflationary pressures remain stubbornly persistent.</li></ul><p><strong>The Labor Department did not</strong> calculate October's annual inflation rate since last year's government shutdown prevented it from collecting price data for October 2025. </p><ul><li>But assuming prices that month were halfway between September and November, overall inflation over the last 12 months was 4% — up from 3.7% in September. Core inflation would have risen to 2.8%, up from 2.6%.</li><li>Another measure similarly paints a picture of hot inflation. Core prices rose at a 3.7% annualized pace over the three months through October, the fastest pace by this gauge all year. </li><li>It also is a sharp acceleration from the summer, when underlying inflation appeared to be cooling.</li></ul><p><strong>Zoom out: </strong>Gasoline prices advanced another 1% in October after surging 9.1% in September, adding to the steep increase in fuel costs since the Iran war began.</p><ul><li>Food prices climbed, raising concerns that higher diesel costs are rippling through to consumer prices. Grocery prices increased 0.4% after declining in September, while restaurant prices gained 0.5%.</li><li>Shelter costs rose 0.3%, accounting for more than 30% of the overall increase in consumer prices last month.</li></ul><p><strong>Zoom in:</strong> Inflation is persistent in the services sector, which is largely insulated from swings in energy prices. </p><ul><li>A closely watched inflation measure that excludes housing, energy and food prices surged 0.4% in October — pushed up by higher costs in transportation, medical care and insurance.</li></ul><p><strong>What to watch:</strong> A strong labor market is not providing much relief from the sharply rising cost of living.</p><ul><li>Inflation has now outpaced or matched wage growth for three consecutive months, leaving workers with less purchasing power.</li></ul>
<div>Data: <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm" target="_blank">Bureau of Labor Statistics</a>; Chart: Courtenay Brown/Axios</div><p>Inflation remained hot in October, according to data from the Labor Department released on Tuesday.</p><p><strong>Why it matters:</strong> The Consumer Price Index shows that even as gasoline prices steadied, <a href="https://www.axios.com/economy/inflation" target="_blank">inflation pressures</a> elsewhere remained stubborn.</p><hr /><p><strong>By the numbers:</strong> CPI rose 0.4% last month, slowing from the 0.6% increase in September. </p><ul><li>Gasoline prices gained 1% in October, a sharp slowdown from the 9.1% surge in September, the Labor Department said.</li><li>Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, advanced 0.3% for the third straight month, with higher prices for recreation, medical care, car insurance and airline fares contributing to the increase.</li></ul><p><strong>Of note:</strong> The Labor Department did not publish year-over-year inflation rates for October. Last year's <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/11/13/government-shutdown-bls-report" target="_blank">government shutdown</a> left a gap in the data that prevents direct comparisons with October 2025.</p><ul><li>But if one assumes the October 2025 readings were halfway between September and November, year-over-year inflation comes to 4% — or 2.8% excluding food and energy.</li><li>That compares with September's annual inflation rate of 3.7%, or 2.6% excluding food and energy.</li></ul><p><strong>The big picture:</strong> The inflation report was already shaping up to be a crucial piece of the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision next month. But the stakes grew just hours before its release when Fed governor Christopher Waller raised the prospect of a larger-than-usual rate hike if inflation remains stubbornly elevated.</p><ul><li>In <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/waller20261110a.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank">a speech</a>, Fed governor Christopher Waller said a half-point rate hike should be considered next month if core inflation rose by at least 0.3% in October — exactly what Tuesday's report showed.</li><li>The yield on the two-year Treasury note, which is particularly sensitive to expectations for Fed interest rate policy, jumped 0.13% on Tuesday following Waller's comments and the CPI report. </li></ul><p><strong>What to watch:</strong> The report also offers a fresh measure of the inflation problem that helped shape last week's midterm elections.</p><ul><li>Nearly nine in 10 voters said the cost of living was a "crucial" or "major" factor in their vote in last week's midterms, according to <a href="https://abcnews.com/Elections/polls-2026-us-house-election-results-analysis" target="_blank">national exit polling data</a>.</li><li>Democrats won on promises to lower prices for groceries and other essentials. Now they face the more difficult task of delivering on their promises, with <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/11/05/now-comes-the-test-for-dems-household-budget-relief" target="_blank">limited power</a> to reverse years of price increases.</li></ul><p><strong>The bottom line:</strong> Inflation remains stubbornly hot, strengthening the case for another Fed rate hike and prolonging the cost-of-living pressures that have frustrated American households.</p><p><em>Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional details.</em></p>
With another month of higher numbers for consumer prices, it seems likely the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in December.
On an annual basis, the producer price index accelerated 6.5%, up 0.2 percentage points, which was the highest annual rate since November 2022.