The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index report for July came in 0.1% lower month-over-month at 98.7. It was 2.7% lower over the last six months (which was faster than the 1% contraction seen in 2024). Keep in mind, the index had been showing the economy already under signs of stress in 2024, and trade uncertainty continued that stress in 2025 thus far. …

Although not many of us give it much thought on a daily basis, but the US farmer is still under tremendous pressure and has been since the pandemic and the subsequent surge in input prices. Farm Bureau released insights from the latest August World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE), and the gap between input prices and selling prices are extreme.

The chart below from Farm Bureau illustrates just how challenging this environment has been for the farming community. The prices paid by farmers still exceed those being received from commodity sales, and this year’s strong harvest season is going to make conditions even worse. …

The short answer on tariffs and inflation through the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is that they were having little impact. The bottom line is that tariff inflation was marginal at best and you really have to dig to find it.
 
If I had a discussion with most of you, you can all tell me where price inflation has hit you (or where you have passed it on to somebody). But at a macro level, it is being partially eaten throughout the supply chain and most of the impact is still muted.
 

I heard one of the staunchest opponents to tariffs say on Wednesday that they anticipate a one-time hit to inflation of 3 tenths of a percent pushing overall inflation (measured in the Fed’s favorite Personal Consumption Expenditures PCE – not in the CPI reflected in this article) to 3.1%. That’s nothing close to what we experienced in 2021-2023 during the global supply chain crisis. And even the Fed is forecasting it to quickly fall back down to 2.4% in 2026. …