The New York Times is still force-feeding its readers agitprop that the long-awaited inflation Armageddon its been hawking for months is still nigh. That’s despite a bevy of welcome economic news in recent weeks that has defied the retrospectively stupid predictions of President Donald Trump’s most pompous critics still high on their bloated egos.
“Where’s the Inflation From Tariffs? Just Wait, Economists Say,” doom-mongered Times reporter Colby Smith in a June 13 crystal ball item passed off as news. They always locate "Economists" to say what they want to impose as conventional "wisdom."
“Tariffs raise consumer prices. It’s a view held by most economists since long before President Trump entered the White House,” Smith wrote. She expressed her shock that Trump’s tariffs on China “did not translate to” the “noticeably higher inflation overall” that forecasters were screeching about for months.
Referring to data showing that inflation has been rather muted in recent months, Smith was compelled to address the burning question, “Are their predictions wrong?” But rather than admitting the obvious — which is “YES” in capital letters — Smith parroted the stubbornness of disgruntled economists assuring everybody that prices will inevitably increase later this summer … eventually.
In other words: Just you wait, we’ll be proven right that Trump is killing the economy. Derp:
Economists are undeterred — for now. It’s not that tariffs aren’t affecting prices, they say. It’s that this isn’t happening in a significant enough way just yet to show up in broad measures of inflation like the Consumer Price Index. They argue that the impact will be much more significant this summer.
Newsflash Smith: Regurgitating the doom-and-gloom predictions of uppity economists an axe to grind against Trump’s economic policies who have about as much predictive value as a weather forecast with is not news. Smith relied on the analysis of Barclays chief economist Marc Giannoni, who was adamant that “‘Inflation is very likely going to increase … It is a question of time, not so much of if.’” Of course, Smith didn’t mention that Giannoni was the same guy who prophesied wrongly to her own newspaper in March that Trump’s tariffs would discourage businesses from hiring. As recent data would show, the American job market would instead remain “resilient,” with tariff-related disruptions not being “serious enough to drag the job market into distress,” according to Investopedia June 6.
Smith would go on to say the quiet part out loud, which was buried in the 20th paragraph and undercut her whole argument: “The milder data could mean that the forthcoming inflation spike may be more contained than once feared, however.” But Smith would take the findings of the latest University of Michigan survey on rising consumer sentiment and twist it to make it seem inconsequential:
The latest survey conducted by the University of Michigan, released on Friday, showed consumers slightly less downbeat and expecting less inflation than earlier in the year, although they are bracing for higher prices.
What a spin-job. That survey was a much bigger deal than what Smith let on. It found that consumer sentiment rebounded to a “much higher level than expected” with a whopping 15.9 percent increase to 60.5 against an estimate of 54, according to CNBC. This also represented the first increase in consumer sentiment on the economy for the year 2025, as Americans’ “views of the economy have improved as inflation has stayed tame and the Trump administration has reached a truce in its trade fight with China,” PBS noted.
Perhaps all the end-of-times bellyaching by the anti-Trump talking heads in the media and the think tanks was just possibly way overblown? After all, as Giannoni admitted in a caveat to his inflation doom prophecy which Smith conveniently buried at the bottom of her story: “‘I would be very, very surprised if we don’t see some stronger inflation prints in the next several months … If inflation continues to be very muted, we’ll have to go back to the drawing board.’”
The Times staff would certainly lose their minds if their long-hoped-for Trump economic crisis doesn’t come to fruition.
