Comment by rthomas6
7 days ago
The flaw I see is centered around this paragraph.
> How can rates come down? The present uncertainty around tariffs and a potential crisis could create conditions that pressure interest rates downward before those Treasury securities mature, by influencing Federal Reserve policy.
Rising prices due to tariffs won't pressure the Fed to lower interest rates. It will increase inflation and worries of inflation, which will actually pressure the Fed to RAISE interest rates. A slowing economy won't stop inflation... We are likely entering into a period of "stagflation". The way out last time was very high interest rates and short term economic hardship.
Prices rising due to tariffs isn't "inflation" in any traditional sense. It's not driven by consumer demand, and therefore the logic for raising rates (i.e. slowing economic growth by reducing money in the market) doesn't apply.
> Prices rising due to tariffs isn't "inflation" in any traditional sense.
Yes, consumer prices rising is inflation in the traditional sense (since, unqualified, “inflation” refers to increases in consumer prices.)
> It's not driven by consumer demand,
Inflation is not restricted to demand-pull inflation, which is why the term “demand-pull inflation” has a reason to exist.
Tariff-driven price increases are a form of cost-push inflation.
> and therefore the logic for raising rates (i.e. slowing economic growth by reducing money in the market) doesn't apply.
The existence of cost-push inflation doesn't change the short-term marginal effects of monetary policy on prices, so of you care just about near-term price levels, the same monetary interventions make sense as for demand-pull inflation.
OTOH, beyond short-term price effects things are very different: demand-pull inflation frequently is a symptom of strong economic growth and cooling the economy can still be consistent with acceptable growth.
Cost-push inflation tends to be an effect of forces outside of monetary policy which tend to slow the economy, so throwing tight money policy on top of it accelerates the slowdown. This is particularly bad if you are already in a recession with cost-push inflation (stagflation).
The good thing, such as it is, about cost-push inflation where the cost driver is a clear policy like tariffs, is that while monetary policy has no good option to fix it, there is a very clear policy solution—stop the policy that is driving the problem.
The problem is when there is irrational attachment to that policy in the current government.
You're just using new terms ("cost-push inflation") to disagree without actually disagreeing.
> so of you care just about near-term price levels, the same monetary interventions make sense as for demand-pull inflation....Cost-push inflation tends to be an effect of forces outside of monetary policy which tend to slow the economy, so throwing tight money policy on top of it accelerates the slowdown. This is particularly bad if you are already in a recession with cost-push inflation (stagflation).
Again, you're just saying the same thing that I wrote above, but arguing (?) that it's actually called "inflation".
If your point is that tariffs are bad, fine. We both agree that what you call "cost-push inflation" is not something you'd rationally raise interest rates to counter.
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If a pair of shoes today costs $30, and a pair of shoes tomorrow costs $60 (not saying this will happen, just positing a scenario), from a consumer perspective, there has been 100% inflation in the price of shoes. It doesn't matter that the price increase is due to tarrifs on imports from Vietnam.
I'm an American that owns/operates a design and manufacturing company -- we build customer products in China and export to USA buyers. Let's say we build the customer product and sell it to them for $20 ex-works China. That means USA customer must pick it up at our dock and pay the shipping fee. Lets ignore the shipping fee to keep it simple. Assume USA customer currently sells the product for $80 in USA. If USA customer now needs to pay 35% import tariffs on $20/unit, then their cost goes up $7 USD. If USA customer passes 100% of that cost to their own final end customer, then they need to start selling it for $87 USD. So 35% tariff ultimately turns into a price increase of 8.75% for consumers.
But actually, tariffs have been 10-25% anyway for a number of years. So for existing products, some tariff cost was already included in that $7 total tariff cost. So, for existing products, the cost may go up ~$3.50 and our customer would sell it for ~$83.50 and the actual increase consumers would see is ~ 4.5% increase.
Now, this is a typical pricing scenario for our USA customers, they are selling individual products that cost $20 in China at volume, in USA at retail for ~3x-5x the per unit purchase cost from China, this is quite common. Now, the USA customer must buy ~5000pcs to get that $20 USD unit cost, while consumers get to buy only 1pcs and pay $87 USD, whether or not that is fair pricing given the risks and R&D costs, that's just the reality. Anyway, I'm not sure of the ex-works cost of shoes, but I'm highly confident big brands like Nike sell them for at least 5X the ex-works cost. So the math would be similar.
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Yes and there will be the usual political consequences associated with inflation; but this type of inflation is caused by a tax and cannot be combated by raising interest rates.
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It's only inflation if you also double your earnings (tongue in cheek, this takes obviously place on a macro scale). This is about balancing costs. Globalization created environmental externalities that are not sustainable. While you enjoy the $30 pair of shoes, the people by the factories suffer. Almost nobody importing goods is really checking the supply chains properly enough. We have pretty strict EPA laws here that are a tariff in their own way.
But the Fed is not the consumer
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If the consumer price index, which is a metric the Fed uses, goes up, then inflation has gone up. Every dollar buys you less (less purchasing power), and the nominal price has increased. To me this indicates inflation. Of course, you need to calculate how this balances out in terms of jobs/wages and the flow of investment, but that's really hard to figure out at this point in time.
I'd expect the CPI to go up in the event of global tariffs at a baseline of 10% assuming all things go ahead as described.
Yes, that's fine. But if the acute cause is not consumer demand, raising interest rates won't do anything.
(Note: a sibling comment suggests that it "doesn't matter", because if you slow the economy enough, you'll offset the artificial "inflation" due to tariffs. Maybe so. But that would be cutting off your arm to treat a paper cut.)
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One way around this might be a twist on Goodhart’s Law: if you come after the people at BLS who produce the CPI [0], and replace them with political appointees, then maybe you can arrive at an “improved” CPI that hews more closely to your political desires. Assuming you’re the kind of leader who privileges optics over high-fidelity data.
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/12/elon-musk-doge-labo...
> I'd expect the CPI to go up in the event of global tariffs at a baseline of 10% assuming all things go ahead as described.
A lot of dollars are spent on US goods/services, so the baseline is more like 10% * proportion of dollars spent on non-US goods.
Inflation is inflation.
The fact that we decided allow a massive tax increase by executive fiat is irrelevant. The fact that we’re risking a death spiral from decreased consumer demand via government imposed inflation is irrelevant.
You’re right in that the usual formula of turning the knobs on interest rates to ease economic challenges is unlikely to work. We may have to turn the knobs to prevent a total death spiral, however. Get ready for 16% mortgages.
It doesn't matter what the root cause of increasing prices is. Fed doesn't have any other levers but to adjust rates up to reduce demand. It will work either way because even if demand is not the source, it will reduce whatever demand that was there.
That's a distinction without a difference.
Oil price shocks in the 70s caused stagflation, a very real threat now.
The solution then was massive pain (Volker) that seemed to slay the beast.
>> rising due to tariffs isn't "inflation" in any traditional sense.
Perhaps not in an academic sense, but the vast majority of people understand inflation as a rise in the cost of living, no matter the root cause.
Yes, but the point being made above is about the reaction of the bond market vis a vis refinancing the debt, not consumers.
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Actually, price increases caused by tariffs are a type of inflation—specifically, cost-push inflation. This is consistent with standard definitions found in macroeconomics and international economics textbooks.
Inflation is definitely going to happen due to tariffs. If I'm paying 20% more next year on average for products above what I'm currently paying that is 20% inflation for me, that is what people will see; they don't care about your purist form of inflation arguments. They also vote against people who cause inflation, especially when they promised the opposite.
Didn't stop the Fed last time, when inflation was due to market control letting companies pick their own price (also not "real" inflation).
It doesn't matter what causes inflation. It's always a sign that there's more money than is needed for current and anticipated levels of economic activity. And the correct course of action is always to raise the rates to reduce the pace that the money is printed at.
At least if you care about avoiding hyperinflation.
There's nothing in the definition of inflation that says it needs to be driven by consumer demand.
Coupled with tax cuts?
The logic is very reductive. It's like: "the Fed's job is to cut a snake, so if they see a snake around their head they'll just close their eyes and cut both".
Raising rates does Absolutely Nothing to undo the tariffs or bringing the price down. Fed is not a blind machine.
+1. In my relatively uninformed opinion what trump is doing is accelerating a kind of global arbitration in which the US is no longer the dominant economic power. We are going to have to share our toys. The “3rd world” is developing and it isn’t as easy to bully the globe into doing all our dirty work.
In my imagination, 50 years from now we will have a quality of life more similar to Central Europe: fine, but nothing special. Most people will live much more simply, rent smaller spaces, drive less ostentatious cars that they share. People will live with their families out of necessity and strawberries won’t be available in December.
Since people won't actually have more money to spend, you would expect it to lower the prices of other things like housing or travel. So there should be a negligible impact on inflation depending on the weighting.
The Fed may raise interest rates, that is, proposing that securities be sold at a higher discount.
A fearful market may end up bidding up these securities anyway, bring the effective rate down.
This is flat out wrong. The Fed raises and lowers interest rates to stimulate or tamp down demand. Raising interest rates because prices rise while demand drops due to a trade war would accomplish nothing.
The Fed has two mandates: maximum employment & stable prices. If prices go up, the Fed is mandated to raise interest rate.
> The Fed has two mandates: maximum employment & stable prices.
It actually has three listed in the Federal Reserve Act:
* Maximum employment
* Stable prices
* Moderate long-term interest rates
It's popularly called a “dual mandate” because it is perceived that properly balancing the first two will naturally also achieve the third.
> If prices go up, the Fed is mandated to raise interest rate.
No, it isn't, especially if employment is already below the “full employment” level and expected to drop even without the rate hike. Demand-pull inflation in periods of strong employment and economic growth or looming deflation in periods of weak enoloyment and economic growth are easy-mode monetary policy choices (at least as to direction, magnitude may be tricky).
But tariff-induced cost-push inflation in weak growth slowing employment conditions, where Congress and the President decline to remove the non-monetary policy root cause, that’s hard-mode monetary policy, because the usual tools to address either the employment or price problem will make the other worse.
They're mandated to raise interest rates in the event of structural inflation, not in the event of a one-time increase in prices. It would be silly if the government increasing the VAT required the fed to increase interest rates.
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The first sentence is right. The second is wrong, as implied by the first. If raising interest rates would exacerbate a recession and thereby unemployment, the fed will not do it just because prices are rising. You are ignoring half of their mandate.
The Fed has a mandate to keep inflation under control but a lot of leeway to decide if they should increase interest rates or not. If they see a price increase as temporary or structural, and not based on an interest-rate-responsive process, they will not increase rates. Some prices are "sticky", some are definitely not.
So you don't think employers will raise wages as the cost of food increases?
No - because generally there will be a lot more folks in the labor market with less leverage so they will not need to pay more in order to attract the talent they need. This is also why inflation is typically solved by recessions. They reduce labor demand which reduces wages which (generally) reduces the price of producing things overall.
Perhaps, we are mixing 2 things:
1) Economic/Monetary Inflation, which is an increase in the money supply in an economy driven by government or central bank ("print money").
2) Price Inflation, which is an increase in the general price level of goods and services that people typically notice at the groceries or gas and usually derives from monetary inflation, but can also be due to the new tariffs.
Is the Fed going to do the same confusion and use 2 to justify higher rates for longer?
I think they shouldn't unless they're being disingenuous and politically motivated (push just enough to make the entire Trump mandate an unending crisis until Democrats get back in power).
According to monetarist theory these two things are one and the same.
The main source of "money printing" is banks making loans. And this is what the Fed targets when it raises interest rates.
I'm not quite sure whether tariffs really do lead to inflation. It depends on how consumers and companies respond to higher prices of imported goods and to the general sense of uncertainty.
> The main source of "money printing" is banks making loan
Sounds like a similar mechanism as the UK. I'm not aware if the system is exactly the same or not.
It was apparently so poorly understood in the UK that the bank of England wrote a paper (Money creation the Modern Economy https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-...) in 2014 to clarify where new money comes from. There's a good summary here https://positivemoney.org/uk-global/archive/proof-that-banks....
It's not something I was aware of until recently, but I was surprised that it was not more under the control of the government and central bank (in the UK, anyway, if it turns out it's different in the US).
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>I'm not quite sure whether tariffs really do lead to inflation. It depends on how consumers and companies respond to higher prices of imported goods and to the general sense of uncertainty.
They won't absorb the new costs. That has not happened in the history of capitalism as far as I am aware. Higher costs will inevitably equate to higher prices without an offset somewhere.
Investors don't like unpredictability, which Trump has already shown to be very unpredictable in regards to tariffs (the whole on again off again stance changes for example).
Higher prices also lead to less buying activity. History has proven this out too.
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> I think they shouldn't unless they're being disingenuous and politically motivated (push just enough to make the entire Trump mandate an unending crisis until Democrats get back in power).
They've been saying since the Biden administration they are going to keep raising rates. If the Trump regime's choices drive us into an unending crisis, bailing him out with rate cuts would be the politically motivated choice. Continuing to raise rates is just sticking to principles.
Not true. The Fed did lower rates leading up to the election, seemingly to postpone a crisis until Democrats got elected (which didn't happen).
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/federal-reserve-expected-...
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