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If Trump wants to kill inflation, the first thing he needs to do is get more homes built

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Homes under construction in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on Nov. 19th, 2024.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

If President-elect Donald Trump is going to push inflation back down to a more tolerable level, he will need help from housing costs, an area where federal policymakers have only a limited amount of influence.

The November consumer price index report contained mixed news on the shelter front, which accounts for one-third of the closely followed inflation index.

On one hand, the category posted its smallest full-year increase since February 2022. Moreover, two key rent-related components within the measure saw their smallest monthly gains in more than three years.

But on the other hand, the annual rise was still 4.7%, a level that, excluding the Covid era, was last seen in mid-1991 when CPI inflation was running around 5%. Housing contributed about 40% of the monthly increase in the price gauge, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than food costs.

With the CPI annual rate now nudging up to 2.7% — 3.3% when excluding food and energy — it’s not clear that inflation is consistently and convincingly headed back to the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal, at least not until housing inflation eases even more.

“It would be expected that over time, we would start to see year-over-year slower growth in rents,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, a Maryland-based listing service that covers six states and Washington, D.C. “It just feels like it’s taking a long time, though.”

Still rising but not as fast

Indeed, housing inflation has been on a slow, uneven trek lower since peaking in March 2023. Much like the overall CPI, shelter components continue to rise, though at a slower pace.

The housing issue has been caused by ongoing cycle of supply outstripping demand, a condition that began in the early days of Covid and which has yet to be resolved. Housing supply in November was about 17% below its level five years ago, according to Realtor.com.

Rents have been a particular focus for policymakers, and the news there also has been mixed.

The average national rent in October stood at $2,009 a month, down slightly from September but still 3.3% higher than a year ago, according to real estate market site Zillow. Rents over the past four years are up some 30% nationally.

Looking at housing, costs also continue to climb, a condition exacerbated by high interest rates that the Federal Reserve is trying to lower.

Until mortgage rates come down we won't see prices come down, says Howard Hughes Corp CEO

Though the central bank has cut its benchmark borrowing rate by three-quarters of a percentage point since September, and is expected to knock off another quarter point next week, the typical 30-year mortgage rate actually has climbed about as much as the Fed has cut during the same time frame.

All of the converging factors post a potential threat to Trump, whose policies otherwise, such as tax breaks and tariffs, are projected by some economists to add to the inflation quandary.

“We know that some of the president-elect’s proposed initiatives are quite inflationary, so I think the prospects for continued progress towards 2% are less sure than they might have been six months ago,” Sturtevant said. “I don’t feel like I’ve been compelled by anything in particular that suggests that targeting the supply issue is something that the federal government can meaningfully do, certainly not in the short term.”

Optimism for now

During the presidential campaign, Trump made deregulation a cornerstone of his economic platform, and that could spill into the housing market by opening up federal land for construction and generally lowering barriers for homebuilders. Trump also has been a strong proponent for lower interest rates, though monetary policy is largely out of his purview.

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

The mood on Wall Street was generally upbeat about the housing picture.

“Rents may finally be normalizing to levels consistent with 2% inflation,” Bank of America economist Stephen Juneau said in a note. The November housing data “will be viewed as encouraging at the Fed,” wrote economist Krushna Guha, head of central bank strategy at Evercore ISI.

Still, shelter expenses “continue to be the number one source for higher prices, and that the rate of increase has slowed is no comfort,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.

That could cause trouble for Trump, who faces a potential Catch-22 that will make easing the housing burden difficult to solve.

“We’re not going to drop rates until shelter costs come down. But shelter can’t come down until rates are lower,” Sturtevant said. “We know that there are some wild cards out there that we might not have been talking about two or three months ago.”

Economics

Why stricter voting laws no longer help Republicans

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“The Republicans should pray for rain”—the title of a paper published by a trio of political scientists in 2007—has been an axiom of American elections for years. The logic was straightforward: each inch of election-day showers, the study found, dampened turnout by 1%. Lower turnout gave Republicans an edge because the party’s affluent electorate had the resources to vote even when it was inconvenient. Their opponents, less so.

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Economics

Why the president must not be lexicographer-in-chief

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Who decides what legal terms mean? If it is Donald Trump, God help America

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Economics

Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

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Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

Inflation barely budged in April as tariffs President Donald Trump implemented in the early part of the month had yet to show up in consumer prices, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s key inflation measure, increased just 0.1% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.1%. The monthly reading was in line with the Dow Jones consensus forecast while the annual level was 0.1 percentage point lower.

Excluding food and energy, the core reading that tends to get even greater focus from Fed policymakers showed readings of 0.1% and 2.5%, against respective estimates of 0.1% and 2.6%.

Consumer spending, though, slowed sharply for the month, posting just a 0.2% increase, in line with the consensus but slower than the 0.7% rate in March. A more cautious consumer mood also was reflected in the personal savings rate, which jumped to 4.9%, up from 0.6 percentage point in March to the highest level in nearly a year.

Personal income surged 0.8%, a slight increase from the prior month but well ahead of the forecast for 0.3%.

Markets showed little reaction to the news, with stock futures continuing to point lower and Treasury yields mixed.

People shop at a grocery store in Brooklyn on May 13, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Trump has been pushing the Fed to lower its key interest rate as inflation has continued to gravitate back to the central bank’s 2% target. However, policymakers have been hesitant to move as they await the longer-term impacts of the president’s trade policy.

On Thursday, Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell held their first face-to-face meeting since the president started his second term. However, a Fed statement indicated the future path of monetary policy was not discussed and stressed that decisions would be made free of political considerations.

Trump slapped across-the-board 10% duties on all U.S. imports, part of an effort to even out a trading landscape in which the U.S. ran a record $140.5 billion deficit in March. In addition to the general tariffs, Trump launched selective reciprocal tariffs much higher than the 10% general charge.

Since then, though, Trump has backed off the more severe tariffs in favor of a 90-day negotiating period with the affected countries. Earlier this week, an international court struck down the tariffs, saying Trump exceeded his authority and didn’t prove that national security was threatened by the trade issues.

Then in the latest installment of the drama, an appeals court allowed a White House effort for a temporary stay of the order from the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Economists worry that tariffs could spark another round of inflation, though the historical record shows that their impact is often minimal.

At their policy meeting earlier this month, Fed officials also expressed worry about potential tariff inflation, particularly at a time when concerns are rising about the labor market. Higher prices and slower economic growth can yield stagflation, a phenomenon the U.S. hasn’t seen since the early 1980s.

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