The idea is that if there is less supply, you ideally want there to also be less demand. If supply decreases but there's also a ton of cash splashing around, t

The idea is that if there is less supply, you ideally want there to also be less demand. If supply decreases but there's also a ton of cash splashing around, then people try to use it to get things... But there's not enough things, so the price of everything gets bid up. More than 20% of all dollars in existence were "printed" in the last 2 years. This, on it's own, would tend to increase inflation. Combined with supply side issues, we can see how it has definitely increased inflation. Inflation itself is also an issue in terms of making sure the supply side works well. Prices don't go up smoothly and uniformly for everything at once, rather there's chaos and delays as every step of everything gets renegotiated, and a cascade effect from that that causes more disruption. So, you want to deal with inflation, probably. Increased rates mean less money being "created" in the form of credit, which means fewer dollars splashing around, which means fewer dollars to bid up the prices of short supplies, which means lower inflation, theoretically.