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US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war
- rdudek 5mo agoThe tidbid they're not talking about are the fact that wages are down .5% https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/12/cpi-inflation-april-2026-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/12/cpi-inflation-april-2026-.ht...
- cyanydeez 5mo ago[flagged]
- rusk 5mo agoAs you’d expect from the staggeringly low (by international, 1st world standards) turnout
- Apocryphon 5mo agoState and local governments care?
- cyanydeez 5mo agodepends on the color of your skin in a lot of them.
- throwawaypath 5mo agoThey also don't care.
- ZeroGravitas 5mo agoThe very first time I thought "That's it, Trump is done, it's over" is when he complained wages were too high in the US. Clearly he thought it was a gaffe as he denied saying it shortly after saying it twice in two videotaped appearances. But he sailed on through that and many other misteps.
- BLKNSLVR 5mo agoEverything he says ever, all the time, should be his undoing. And with every 'next thing' the US moves further from any pretext of democracy or rule of law.
- pixelatedindex 5mo agoI feel like wages have stagnated too, but data says it has been keeping up (barely) with inflation: https://www.statista.com/chart/32428/inflation-and-wage-growth-in-the-united-states/?srsltid=AfmBOop_nmApDwe4rXBOCLg4mUxEAQHVCgu_DnzX7gzoRMR5fnG1BJkZ https://www.statista.com/chart/32428/inflation-and-wage-grow...
- jcranmer 5mo agohttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q That's what you call stagnating wages?
- runako 5mo agoThat chart is rough. Q3 2025 about equivalent to 5-6 years prior.
- joe_mamba 5mo ago[flagged]
- parineum 5mo agoPart of the reason people voted for "no more wars" was because of the long history of more wars from both parties. Desperate people make desperate choices.
- newaccountman2 5mo agoThere was literally no evidence voting for Trump would have reasonably led to less wars, and enough evidence, in fact, to the contrary.
- kxkdkdisoskdnen 5mo agoaside from the first term? guy lost his marbles after 2020 but there were no new wars in the first term and that was evidence. turns out he has different handlers this time. and dementia. but there were 4 years with no new wars. I liked that.
- newaccountman2 5mo agoThere weren't any "new wars" during Obama's and Biden's terms either, and Trump was clearly for years before he ran in 2016. Ukraine is something Russia started and the cost to the US is DoD dollars and military hardware. Iran is something the US and Israel started. It has led to casualties among American soldiers, civilians in Gulf countries, as well as economic cost that is falling on all of us.
- ryandrake 5mo agoYes, MAGA ran on a broad platform of chaos, griefing, and personal vendettas. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to connect the dots and know war was on the agenda.
- parineum 5mo ago
- giantg2 5mo agoThose are real wages. We would expect to see that during a sudden jump in inflation. Wages tend to lag inflation. The other interesting part in that article is that excluding fuel and food still shows 2.8% inflation - only 1% attributable to food and fuel. Makes it seem like the main article and this article have different spins. Edit: Wow people are jumping on this. The point is that food and fuel increases account for about 26% of the overall inflation number, meaning that the bulk of inflation is not related directly to fuel. The original article makes it it seem different.
- stuaxo 5mo agoAh fuel and food - those classic unimportant things.
- jcranmer 5mo agoFuel and food are excluded from core inflation not because they're unimportant (they are in fact incredibly important) but because they are much more volatile in price--going up and down in bigger increments--so that you get a more stable view of inflation by excluding them.
- array_key_first 5mo agoBut it's a bit of a nasty trick because food, in particular, has inflated in price a lot the past 3 years. Some items, like sugar, are legitimately double the price they were.
- HumblyTossed 5mo agoFor most Americans (aka: not the top 5% like SWEs), food and fuel increases hurt a lot.
- hnthrowaway0315 5mo agoSWEs do feel the pain, too. Not everyone has a 200K+ gig. Especially for a big family.
- keernan 5mo ago"With productivity rising at a brisk pace, the share of national income that goes to workers has sunk to its lowest point on record" https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/economy/cpi-inflation-report-consumer-prices.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/economy/cpi-infl...
- dennis_jeeves2 5mo agoShould have been jumps BY 3.8%
- scott_w 5mo agoNo, it’s saying inflation increased from 3.3% to 3.8%, the article is correct.
- Waterluvian 5mo agoJumps by 15%!
- baal80spam 5mo ago[flagged]
- sosomoxie 5mo agoA completely unnecessary war that benefits no one other than Israel and harms the rest of the world. The only positive to come from this is the annihilation of US military assets in the Middle East and an even deeper unity of the world against Zionism. It’s tough times but we will ultimately defeat this heinous ideology.
- jvanderbot 5mo agoThere was a time when USA guaranteed the safe passage of shipping, which helped secure a peaceful world order, apparently. I view this as a continuation of that legacy, but admit I only have 1-2 books supporting this view.
- armada651 5mo agoHow is closing the strait a continuation of a legacy of guaranteed safe passage?
- jvanderbot 5mo agoI wasn't aware USA closed the stait
- ajross 5mo agoThis is some extraordinary up-is-down construction. Hormuz was open in February, and for decades preceding that. It's closed now. How is this situation the result of the "guarantee of safe passage of shipping", exactly?
- jvanderbot 5mo ago1) Iran has been naughty v. shipping for a long time, directly and indirectly 2) Iran has been naughty v. USA's allies for a long time, directly and indirectly 3) Iran has been naughty v. USA itself for a long time, directly and indirectly So, in the interested of stable trade through Hormuz, someone decided to push Iran out. The intent was not to close the strait. The effect was to create a situation unsafe for trade, which is ironic and comical, but it's not the intent. So, since principles determine intent, I think I was not being contradictory.
- doctorpangloss 5mo agoenergy pricing is complex. some food for thought: if everyone believes the straight of hormuz is open, even if it is not, even if 20% less oil is being moved globally, what happens to oil prices? what happens to oil deliveries? is it possible for oil to be cheap in America while Bangladesh experiences shortages, instead of everyone paying more? is oil the same as energy? or is it more relevant to transportation? does it matter? suburban life is quite comfortable, a LOT of people keep choosing big single family home with yard, drive everywhere. driving everywhere is VERY comfortable. a lot of people like it. are they willing to pay more for it? does buying a house that is MUCH cheaper by virtue of being far away from a city stop making sense for 250m americans just because gas is 50% more expensive?
- whateveracct 5mo agoi live in the suburbs and gas could 2x, 3x in price and my wallet wouldn't notice. i fill up a couple times a month.
- Retric 5mo agoMany products are shipped half way across the US on semi trucks, that hits everyone’s pockets even if you drive an EV. Train’s move around vast amounts of freight but they got optimized for coat per ton for coal, wheat, etc not latency. Which then plays havoc if you try and do just in time manufacturing etc using them. Airfare and thus airfreight is simply dominated by fuel costs which hits many industries in ways that are less obvious but still expensive.
- whateveracct 5mo agoI live in a major shipping center in a state with a lot of agriculture. I think that's why my grocery prices haven't gone nuts. For instance, I buy whole chickens (local-grown, free-range) for 99c/lb regularly. Looking at my receipts, I spend a few hundred/week at this $KROGER. And that includes buying alcohol and non-food items like charcoal, cat litter, diapers, cleaning supplies.
- ck2 5mo agonow imagine this going on through January 2029 if Dems don't win the Senate too because it took YEARS for Obama's team to get them to sign something and he's already used up half of US war stockpiles Iran's dictators will eat and sleep just fine for years while their people starve and get bombed to death click on YTD here and imagine that flat-line for YEARS https://en.macromicro.me/charts/94482/imf-strait-of-hormuz-number-of-ships-and-transit-volume https://en.macromicro.me/charts/94482/imf-strait-of-hormuz-n...
- timoshishi 5mo agoI would imagine that other powers of the world would support some kind of invasion if the strait were to remain closed for a long period of time
- phatfish 5mo agoOr they finally tell Trump to fuck off as he as no tariff leverage any more as their economies are cooked anyway? It is funny watching economies like Japan -- where their new prime minister was fluffing Trump like crazy -- get fully screwed.
- cyberlurker 5mo agoThey will just pay the toll.
- twodave 5mo agoIt's possible, in the short term, but eventually the only oil flowing thru the Strait of Hormuz will be Iranian oil, and perhaps not even that. Give countries enough time and they'll rather invest in building a way around Iran than giving them money for passage thru international waters.
- csomar 5mo agoThe toll will be just a bit under what it would cost to divert the supply.
- dwa3592 5mo agoI understand it is a complicated calculation but to me personally, inflation feels much more than that. I have been tracking the price of milk. Around 3 months ago, i was getting a gallon of milk at $2.97, then it went up to 3.07, then 3.25. Yesterday I paid 3.40. That's like 15% gain on something as basic as milk. All numbers from the same store.
- trashface 5mo agoThat's probably fuel costs. The milk and everything else comes in on a truck (and dairy farming is also fuel intensive itself)
- dominotw 5mo agomilk prices go up and down even outside inflation cycles. how do you know this is inflation. price of milk at your local grocery store in last 3 months is not enough data to attribute causation.
- dwa3592 5mo agoup and down 15% every 3 months? if that's the case then I take my comment back. I am not super aware of how milk pricing works.
- dominotw 5mo ago[flagged]
- triceratops 5mo agoThis has serious "the climate changes naturally" energy.
- dominotw 5mo agoit doesnt if you care to look for many instances in data where local milk prices didnt reflect broader inflation trends. but you are more interested in making idiotic snarky comments and feel smug.
- khriss 5mo agoI can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. We have * Demonstrated that the US simply can't offer any meaningful security guarantee to it's middle east partners. * Permanently ceded de facto control over the straits of Hormuz to Iran * Significantly strengthened the hardliners in the Iranian regime and cleared the way for them to have absolute power by eliminating all moderates * Spiked inflation at home and doubled down on pissing off pretty much every single country except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them * Exposed the perilous state of of the defense industrial base (in spite of us spending more than the next 10 countries combined). We simply can't produce enough military hardware to sustain a sustained conflict with a country like Iran. I shudder to think just how badly we will be outmatched in a shooting war with China. All of this to get to a point where we are negotiating a deal which is worse than what we already had with the JCPOA. I think we will look back on this as the US version of the Suez crisis, the beginning of the end of the US empire.
- joe_mamba 5mo ago>I can't think of a single way in which the United States came out ahead in the war. The stock market did, which is amazing if you're the top 10% of asset owners who own 50% of the country's wealth. >except Russia by heaping sky rocketing energy costs on them Russia doesn't benefit from this energy spike, since its biggest customers, China and India, have long term contracts that Russia can't just rip and renegotiate to charge spot prices, since they're in a pickle right now and depend on imports to keep the war going while not being able to sell to too many nations so they're stuck watching potential earnings go past them.
- baggy_trough 5mo ago[flagged]
- khriss 5mo agoNo, this is what the madman in the White House failed to anticipate, even though he was explicitly told that this would happen.
- ku-man 5mo ago[dead]
- _DeadFred_ 5mo agoFlagged dead (HN loves downvotes as censorship) ku-man 6 hours ago [dead] | parent | next [–] Perhaps he didn't fail to anticipate. Perhaps he knew what will happen but he didn't have any choice.
- some-guy 5mo agoIronically Trump may end up being the most pro green energy president at the end of all of this.
- actionfromafar 5mo agoPro golf green.
- wing-_-nuts 5mo agoYeah, funny, all the people that turned away from EVs because the subsidies were going away suddenly realize that EVs and renewables are a much more resilient combo than being reliant on fossil fuels and their refining network.
- AntiUSAbah 5mo agoWhat is your comment adding to this discussion? Do you want to say, that a specific small group of people are positive about a surge in energy costs? How does that reflect your acceptance of the overall climate change topic you are referencing? You do not believe in it? Or do you believe in it but you do not care? Like the latest AMOC paper doesn't bother you in particular? Am I a climate activist if i think its very bad on one side but at least pushes more people into independent reneable energy sources? What do you think about the thing that Trump, the Clown of the USA, is directly responsible for it? Do you think Trump is a climate activist?
- nukedindia 5mo ago[dead]
- philipnee 5mo agothis is core inflation no? it's interesting that it doesn't account for food and energy. so likely much higher in reality...
- neogodless 5mo agohttps://apnews.com/article/us-inflation-consumer-iran-war-3f11b7fdd20ea56d2f0895e5241af7b6 https://apnews.com/article/us-inflation-consumer-iran-war-3f... Consumer Price Index (CPI) vs Core CPI The above link is a little dumb because their own graph only goes up to March. But it looks like in March Core CPI was 2.6% while CPI was 3.3%. Still, the details are in the text: > Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called consumer core prices rose 0.4% last month from March and 2.8% from April 2025
- hendo3000 5mo agoI've always rolled my eyes at inflation because clearly, it's worse than the basket of goods they use to monitor. Groceries probably get incentives to keep bread, eggs, etc. prices somewhat regulated so the inflation number is muted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- tencentshill 5mo agoMany of the inputs (farms, oil) are heavily subsidized already. Meat, milk, etc. but I'm sure they account for that in some way.
- bparsons 5mo agoFrankly, it is a miracle that inflation is this low. Markets have not fully metabolized the impact from the closure of the Persian Gulf.
- JeremyNT 5mo agoI keep thinking this but... line keep going up. I've seen reporting that energy prices won't return to pre-war levels this calendar year, even assuming an immediate return to the status quo basically right now (which seems unlikely). I find the whole thing really confusing. The facts I can see with my own eyes suggest high inflation and this surely means no substantial rate cuts (which... the market has expected) if not reduced consumer spending and risk of recessions. But the markets think everything is... fine? So... what are we missing here?
- squibonpig 5mo agoWe probably aren't missing anything. It just can't happen right now because if the stock market capitulates then it does so for years and everyone loses a bunch of money. Their only option is to hope for some kind of end or bailout or whatever that keeps getting further away, and they've pushed that hope way past reason.
- surgical_fire 5mo ago> what are we missing here? Markets is just gambling but the gamblers wear suits and pretend things are respectable. It doesn't need to make sense, line just needs to go up. It works until it doesn't.
- disgruntledphd2 5mo ago> But the markets think everything is... fine? So... what are we missing here? The current rally is extremely narrow, mostly just AI/Big Tech and chip stocks. But yeah, the "market" appears to believe that this will all be over soon, which seems unlikely to me.
- tencentshill 5mo agoI should invest a non-trivial amount. That usually results in markets trending down.
- nukedindia 5mo ago[dead]
- kome 5mo ago"US inflation jumps to 3.8% as energy costs surge from Iran war" and all of this to support apartheid in israel.
- legitster 5mo agoBTW, the conflict is unlikely to resolve soon. The US has literally never honored a deal with Iran. Iran has no reason to negotiate with the US. The US either has to back down, put boots on the ground, or sit and wait. If the government survives, they had a quiet infrastructure investment from China they can activate to rebuild their damaged facilities.
- lesuorac 5mo agoIsn't it just Trump that doesn't honor deals? What did Bush / Obama / Biden do?
- legitster 5mo agoGoing all the way back to the hostage crisis, the US never really held up their end of the deal. We were also quietly making inroads with the revolutionary government of Iran and then secretly backed Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. But the elephant in the room is Trump and the JCPOA. We just backed out and gave them nothing in return for them holding up their side of the bargain. Furthermore, we made such an embarrassment out of the other signatories that such a deal amongst western powers will never happen again either.
- toasty228 5mo ago> The US has literally never honored a deal with Iran. It'll be better now, they killed the dad/wife/son/etc. of their new leader, this will 100% make them eager to negociate in good terms
- legitster 5mo agoThis is the story overall of strategic bombing campaigns. All they do is strengthen the resolve of the recipient country and rally people to the flag. Before using the nuclear weapons on Japan, we literally firebombed every city in Japan BUT Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And arguably the only reason they surrendered when they did was because Russia was beginning a large scale invasion of their own. People who call themselves "foreign policy experts" but advocate for regime change through bombing are not serious people, and the fact that we have treated them as such for so long is an indictment on our collective intelligence.
- bix6 5mo agoWhat I don’t understand is how the stock market can be so decoupled from reality. It’s a game at this point and completely disconnected from reality. Everything should be down 20%+ given oil is an input to everything and yet stocks are ATHing.
- irishcoffee 5mo agoWhen you are inject 3-5 trillion dollars into the economy over the span of months, it takes a while for reality to catch up.
- b40d-48b2-979e 5mo agoidk, I read an analysis recently that retail investors in funds like the S&P500 are breaking how the stock market is "supposed" to work since people keep pumping the same money every month for retirement into the same 500 companies (or whatever an index is funding) without consequence to their actions, so they're never punished. Line goes up. The purchasing power of the masses outweighs the old brokerage class that decided which companies succeeded based on "real merits".
- AntiUSAbah 5mo agoProbably very true, very simplified. The best strategy then would be to know when the retirement fund money stops doing this due to age pyramid collapse i would assume.
- nukedindia 5mo ago[dead]
- nukedindia 5mo ago[dead]
- cosmicgadget 5mo agoWell unlike when he and Jerome Powell unleashed the money printer on us in 2020 and it took most of Biden's term to tame inflation, this should last as long as the Iran war. Unless there's a permanent shift in the strait or sticky consumer prices overcome the efficient market.
- exabrial 5mo agoCongress needs to be forbidden from ever raise debt ceiling again. When they run out of money, the first they have to cut is their own wages, then the wages of federal staffers that serve them, then their healthcare, their benefits, everything that serves THEM gets cut first.
- pupppet 5mo agoThe mental gymnastics Trump supporters must go through to justify blaming Biden for gas prices during his term but blaming everyone but Trump for gas prices now. Not in the US but I'll go out on a limb and guess that gas stations aren't being littered with 'I Did That!" Trump stickers.
- JKCalhoun 5mo ago"…guess that gas stations aren't being littered with 'I Did That!" Trump stickers." But they are, ha ha.
- keernan 5mo ago"With productivity rising at a brisk pace, the share of national income that goes to workers has sunk to its lowest point on record" https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/economy/cpi-inflation-report-consumer-prices.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/business/economy/cpi-infl...
- fulafel 5mo agoThese problems are very small compared to mounting death toll from the climate disaster. We are very late in ramping down fossils production but a far greater badness will come if we keep postponing it.
- johnea 5mo agoHere on HN, I can't image this being interpreted as anything but a good thing. Petro prices up - oil companies make more money Interest rates up - banks make more money Win Win! What could possibly be the problem? If you're one of the little people paying for it all, you should be Proud™ to fulfill your role of enriching ownership...
- tsoukase 5mo agoThe decades long observation seems to hold gain: Reps were always near the oil-military complex and their main policy after elections always aims to offer them huge profits. An almost theatrical war with a puppet oil producing country achieves all goals. They don't care about people, environment or the world. It will last as long as their benefits outweigh their costs.
- deferredgrant 5mo ago[flagged]
- fuckinpuppers 5mo agoEnergy costs surge in a country that supposedly is energy independent?
- stasomatic 5mo agoOutside of ethics of any war or "Iran good" / "USA bad" or vice versa, I am really pissed off at the imbeciles in our (US) intelligence. What did these half wits were hoping for? For decades we were painted a totally different picture of Iran's capabilities than the reality. Now the US willingly and the rest of the world unwillingly are paying for this idiocy. I don't want to. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd say this war was lobbied for by big oil and legacy automakers, for chrissakes.