Ernie Tedeschi, Columnist

Tariffs Are Already Creeping Into US Economic Data

It will be a few months until we see the full effect, but they are starting to show in measures of inflation, retail sales and business orders.

May 28, 2025 at 9:00 AM UTC

By Ernie Tedeschi

Ernie Tedeschi is the director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University and the former chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers under the Biden administration.

Heading higher.
Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg

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Those searching for evidence of the Trump administration’s tariffs on imported goods in the economic data have been left wanting.

Inflation in April as measured by the Consumer Price Index was under control, rising 0.22% overall and 0.24% when excluding food and energy. Both were in line with economists’ estimates and roughly consistent with the Federal Reserve’s targets. On a three-month annualized basis, inflation was 1.6% overall and 2.1% for the core rate.