The Dictatorship
Trump says inflation is ‘defeated’ and the Fed has cut rates, yet prices remain too high for many
WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation has risen in three of the last four months and is slightly higher than it was a year ago, when it helped sink then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Yet you wouldn’t know it from listening to President Donald Trump or even some of the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve.
Trump told the United Nations General Assembly late last month: “Grocery prices are down, mortgage rates are down, and inflation has been defeated.”
And at a high-profile speech in Augustjust before the Fed cut its key interest rate for the first time this yearFederal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said: “Inflation, though still somewhat elevated, has come down a great deal from its post-pandemic highs. Upside risks to inflation have diminished.”
Yet dismissing or even downplaying inflation while it is still above the Fed’s target of 2% poses big risks for the White House and the Federal Reserve. For the Trump administration, it could find itself on the wrong side of a potent issue: Surveys show that many Americans still see high prices as a major burden on their finances.
The Fed may be taking an even bigger gamble: It has cut its key interest rate on the assumption that the Trump administration’s tariffs will only cause a temporary bump up in inflation. If that turns out to be wrong — if inflation gets worse or remains elevated for longer than expected — the Fed’s inflation-fighting credibility could take a hit.
That credibility plays a crucial role in the Fed’s ability to keep prices stable. If Americans are confident that the central bank can keep inflation in check, they won’t take steps — such as demanding sharply higher pay when prices rise — that can launch an inflationary spiral. Companies often increase prices further to offset higher labor costs.
But Karen Dynan, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said this week that with memories of pandemic-era inflation still fresh and tariffs pushing up the cost of imported goods, consumers and businesses could start to lose confidence that inflation will stay low.
“If that proves to be the case, in hindsight it will be that the Fed cuts — and I do expect several more — are going to be seen as a mistake,” Dynan said.
So far, the Trump administration’s tariffs haven’t lifted inflation as much as as many economists expected earlier this year. And it remains far below its 9.1% peak three years ago. Still, consumer prices increased 2.9% in August from a year earlier, up from 2.6% at the same time last year and above the Fed’s 2% target.
The government is scheduled to release the September inflation report on Wednesday, but the data will probably be delayed by the government shutdown.
Tariffs have pushed up the cost of many imported items, including furniture, appliances, and toys. Overall, the cost of long-lasting manufactured goods rose nearly 2% in August from a year earlier. It was a modest gain, but comes after nearly three decades when the cost of such items mostly fell.
The cost of some everyday goods are still rising more quickly than before the pandemic: Grocery prices moved up 2.7% in August from a year ago, the largest gain, outside the pandemic, since 2015. Coffee prices have soared nearly 21% in the past year, partly because Trump has slapped 50% import taxes on Brazil, a leading coffee exporter, and also because climate change-induced droughts have cut into coffee bean harvests.
Most Fed officials are still concerned that inflation is too high, according the minutes of its Sept. 16-17 meeting. Yet they still chose to cut their key interest rate, because they were more worried about the risk of worsening unemployment than about higher inflation.
But the concern for some economists is that the ongoing rollout of tariffs and the fact that many companies are still implementing price hikes in response could result in more than just a temporary boost to inflation.
“It is a big gamble after what we’ve been going through … to count on it being transitory,” said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University and a former top adviser to President Barack Obama. “Once upon a time, (3% inflation) would have been considered really high.”
Just two weeks ago, Trump slapped new tariffs on a range of productsincluding 100% on pharmaceuticals, 50% on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, and 25% on heavy trucks. On Friday, he threatened “a massive increase of tariffs” on imports from China in response to that country’s restrictions on rare earth exports.
Some companies are still raising prices to offset the tariff costs. Duties on steel and aluminum imports have pushed up the cost of the cans used by Campbell Soups, leading the company’s CEO to say in September that it will implement “surgical pricing initiatives.”
Chris Butler, CEO of National Tree Company, the nation’s largest artificial Christmas tree seller, says his company will raise prices by about 10% this holiday season on its trees, wreaths, and garlands to offset tariff costs. About 45% of its trees are made in China, with the rest from Southeast Asia, Mexico, and other countries. The cost of labor and real estate is too high to make them in the United States, he said.
Butler also expects there will be a reduced supply of artificial trees and decorations this year, which could lift industry-wide prices further, because most production in China shut down when tariffs on that country hit 145% earlier this year. Production resumed after Trump reduced the duties to 30% but at a slower pace.
Butler has pushed his suppliers to absorb some of the cost of the tariffs, but they won’t pay all of it.
“At the end of the day, we can’t absorb the entirety of it and our factories can’t absorb the entirety of it,” he said. “So we’ve had to pass along some of the increases to consumers.”
Many Fed policymakers are aware of the risks. Jeffrey Schmid, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, who votes on interest rate decisions, said Monday that high inflation that results from a loss of confidence in the central bank is harder to fight than other price spikes, such as those that result from supply disruptions.
“The Fed must maintain its credibility on inflation,” Schmid said. “History has shown that while all inflations are universally disliked, not all inflations are equally costly to fight.”
Yet some Fed officials say that other trends are offsetting the impact of tariffs. Fed governor Stephen Miran, whom Trump appointed just before the central bank’s September meeting, said Tuesday that a steady slowdown in rental costs should reduce underlying inflation in the coming months. And the sharp drop in immigration as a result of the administration’s clampdown will reduce demand, he said, cooling inflation pressures.
“I’m more sanguine about the inflation outlook than a lot of other people are,” he said.
This is an adapted excerpt from the March 24 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Donald Trump’s war on Iran is in its fourth week. Gas prices are up $1 a gallon in much of the country. Stocks continue to fall on fears of global supply shortages.
The death toll is growing. Thirteen American service members have lost their livesand more than 1,200 Iranians have been killed, along with upward of 1,000 people in Lebanonmore than 150 in the surrounding Gulf states and 17 Israelis. That’s not accounting for the millions who are displaced and the thousands who have been injured, including hundreds of U.S. troops.
But according to the president who launched the war, it’s all over.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump expected a fast and easy win.
“We’ve won this. This war has been won,” he told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. “The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news.”
However, during those same remarks, Trump was all over the place — talking about an epic victory, ongoing peace negotiations and personal gifts.
It was all completely counter to his posture over the weekend, when he threatened to “obliterate” Iranian civilian power plants — essentially teasing a war crime — if Iran did not stop blocking oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuzsomething Iran was not doing before Trump attacked them.
But now, he has supposedly pressed pause on that bombing plan for five days because, he said, the negotiations are going well.
When he first announced that in a social media post Monday, it sent oil prices down 10% and boosted stocks.
However, those markets reversed themselves Tuesday after the Iranians said they have not engaged in any serious high-level negotiations with the Americans, and they claimed Trump was making things up to help oil prices. The Israelis said the same thing. (That’s not to say you should take Iran’s word for it, or Israel’s, but you shouldn’t take the White House’s word, either.)
It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump expected a fast and easy win. He had no plan B, and now he is flailing to find some kind of fallback position.
On Monday, sources from the administration told Politico that they have their eyes on a future U.S.-backed leader of Iran: Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian parliament.
“He’s a hot option,” one unnamed U.S. source — who seems to really wants a deal — told Blue Light News. “He’s one of the highest. … But we got to test them, and we can’t rush into it.”
But on Tuesday, that “hot option” trolled Trump for what he called a “jawboning campaign” to stabilize oil prices. In a social media postGhalibaf wrote: “[L]et’s see if they can turn that into ‘actual fuel’ at the pump — or maybe even print gas molecules!”
Call it the fog of Trumpian war: a million contradictory messages flying around, constantly wildly pinging bits of news that don’t make sense together.
Right now, we have reports that Trump’s negotiators, including his envoy Steve Witkoff and Vice President JD Vance, are traveling to Pakistan for informal talks with an Iranian official.
At the same time, unnamed U.S. officials have told The New York Times that the Saudi crown prince is pushing Trump to continue the war until Iran’s government collapses — something the Saudis publicly deny.
In fact, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Saudi officials are holding talks in Riyadh with their Arab counterparts to find a diplomatic off-ramp from the war.
On Tuesday evening, U.S. officials said the Pentagon was poised to deploy 3,000 troops of the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East. That is in addition to two Marine expeditionary units on their way to the region and the 50,000 U.S. troops already stationed there.
Also on Tuesday, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are claiming that U.S. strikes there killed 30 of their members.
But, according to Trump, the peace talks are going great, right?
All eyes everywhere have been on the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran responded to the U.S. attack by striking oil tankers and shutting down 20% of the world’s supply of oil and liquefied natural gas. It is now essentially running a toll operation in the strait.
Some countries, such as China, Japan and India, are negotiating deals with Iran to get its oil out. Which is to say, Iran is shipping more oil and making more money than it was under the U.S. sanctions in place before Trump attacked it.
It’s clear the president sees what’s happening, so now he is trying to share control of the strait with Iran. Trump told reporters the strait would be “jointly controlled” by “maybe” him and “the next ayatollah.”
The administration really thought this was going to be another Venezuela. They told themselves that, and they were egged on to believe it by the staunchest advocates of the war, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sen. Lindsey GrahamR-S.C.
But in Iran, a decapitation strike did not lead to mass uprisings. It did not lead to regime change. It led to the situation in which Iran’s regime is intact, even if militarily degraded, and they now have explicit control of the Strait of Hormuz — a huge pressure point.
It really looks like the U.S. is backed into a corner: It can sue for peace because of the oil tanker situation, but they do not have much leverage, or it can escalate the war. That may be why we’re seeing all these contradictory developments.
In Iran, a decapitation strike did not lead to mass uprisings. It did not lead to regime change. It led to the situation in which Iran’s regime is intact.
Trump issued an ultimatum he had to walk back from because he said there were deep peace negotiations, which then later proved to be completely fabricated.
Now, more U.S. troops are set to be deployed for a possible ground invasion in the Middle East, despite reports that the U.S. has supposedly sent a 15-point plan to Iran through Pakistan to end the war.
It almost looks as if Trump is trying to wave the peace card to keep a lid on oil futures and financial marketsjust long enough to have ground troops in position — and just in time for the markets to close for the weekend on Friday, when Trump’s “pause” on bombing Iranian power plants is set to end.
That could be the plan Trump now settles on, weeks into a deadly war where there was obviously, very clearly, no real plan at all.
Allison Detzel contributed.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
The Dictatorship
Jury finds Meta and YouTube liable in landmark social media trial, awards $6 million
A California state jury found Meta and YouTube liable in a landmark social media case on Wednesday, awarding $3 million in compensatory damages to a plaintiff who brought the case and putting the Instagram maker’s liability at 70% and the Google company’s at 30%.
The jurors later decided to award a total of $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta to pay $2.1 million and YouTube $900,000. The verdict was reached on the jury’s ninth day of deliberation.
A 2023 complaint accused social media companies of fueling an unprecedented mental health crisis for American children through “addictive and dangerous” products. Plaintiffs accused the companies of deliberately tweaking their products to exploit kids’ undeveloped brains to “create compulsive use of their apps.”
The civil case was brought by several plaintiffs against several companies, but this state court trial, which featured testimonyfrom Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, involved a plaintiff described by her initials as “K.G.M.” in court papers against Instagram and YouTube.
In the 2023 complaint, K.G.M. said she was a 17-year-old in California who started using social media at a much younger age, though her mother told her not to and used third-party software to try to prevent the daughter’s social media use. The complaint alleged that the corporate defendants designed their products in ways that let kids evade parental controls and that the companies knew, or should’ve known, that K.G.M. was a minor.
The plaintiff alleged that Instagram’s and other companies’ addictive designs led her to develop “a compulsion to engage with those products nonstop” and to see “harmful and depressive content, urging K.G.M. to commit acts of self-harm, as well as harmful social comparison and body image.”
She alleged that she suffered bullying, depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia through Instagram and that Meta did nothing in response to a report about it. “Meta allowed the predatory user to continue harming minor Plaintiff K.G.M., including through the use of explicit images of a minor child,” the complaint said, adding that the company’s “defective reporting mechanisms and/or deliberate failure to act caused emotional and mental health harms to K.G.M. in addition to and separate from any third-party conduct.”
The companies, which have denied wrongdoingsaid Wednesday that they plan to appeal.
Jillian Frankel contributed from Los Angeles.
Subscribe to theDeadline: Legal Newsletterfor expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
The Dictatorship
Democrat vows to turn ‘Epstein files into Epstein trials’ after release of new depositions
The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday released hours of deposition footage from its interviews with two former close associates of Jeffrey Epsteinattorney Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., a member of the committee, joined “The Weeknight” to discuss the interviews and the efforts to hold any accomplices of the late sex offender accountable.
“What is remarkable is that even in death, his closest associates and co-conspirators are still covering for him,” Stansbury said.
During their depositions, both Indyke and Kahn insisted they had no knowledge of Epstein’s illegal behavior. The New Mexico Democrat cast doubt on those claims, taking particular issue with Indyke’s testimony, during which she said it was possible that Epstein’s former attorney may have “perjured himself.”
“He claimed that he had no knowledge of all of these nefarious activities, and yet he literally has spent decades of his life at the center of this controversy,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’m not buying it.”
Stansbury told MS NOW she believed it was important for the public to understand that both Indyke and Kahn “stand to make tens of millions of dollars off of their execution” of Epstein’s will. She added that “the way the will is structured, there is a survivor fund, and at the end of that, they get to basically keep whatever is left over.”
“We don’t know what was written into whatever contracts, but it’s clear that they have a financial interest,” she said.
Stansbury said the pair’s depositions should be part of a greater effort from lawmakers and law enforcement across the country to pursue accountability for Epstein’s victims, even after his death. She highlighted how her home state, New Mexico, was doing just that.
“That is why we are going to continue to seek justice in this case, and it’s why in New Mexico, not only did we pass a truth commission, but one of the updates that we want to tell people about is that we plan to pursue convictions against individuals who were implicated in these crimes who were not prosecuted by the federal government,” she said. “We want to turn these Epstein files into Epstein trials — and that’s exactly what we plan to do.”
You can watch Stansbury’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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