InflataCart uses accumulated data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to help you visualize if the staples we need are really going up or down in price.
Egg prices have gone completely out of control recently in the US for several reasons (mostly thanks to the avian flu), and the cost is likely to get worse before it gets better.
This is bad news for most of us, but it's particularly jarring for people who have defended Trump's election because of some supposed superpower to reduce the cost of eggs.
Of course, the cost of many staple items fluctuates substantially from month to month and year to year, so developer Wesley Grubbs has made an app to track everything with real data: InflataCart.
This simple iOS app lets you add many of your grocery items to a list, and it'll give you a quick readout of what the national average is compared to one year and five years ago according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So when you look to see if particular campaign promises are kept or not, you can get a glimpse at how policies like tariffs and mass deportations impact your pocketbook.
Even better, this app also lets you track the national average cost of gasoline and electricity, so there's no need to guess if you're meaningfully better off or not.
Of course, other aspects of national policy can really hit pocketbooks hard, and those aren't tracked. In particular, a recent roll-back of a Biden-era attempt to reduce prescription costs could negatively impact millions of Americans, so you'll need more than just this app to see the entire picture.
The latest evidence that homeownership is becoming increasingly less accessible to many Americans: Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell last year to a nearly 30-year low for the second time in as many years.
Elevated mortgage rates, a yearslong shortage of homes on the market, and record-high home prices continued to stymie prospective home shoppers, especially first-time buyers.
That led existing home sales to fall 0.7% last year to 4.06 million — the weakest showing for home sales since 1995 and edging out the terrible year for sales in 2023, the National Association of Realtors said Friday.
Even amid a sales slump, a dearth of homes on the market and rising mortgage rates gave sellers an edge over buyers, helping drive up the national median home price for all of last year to an all-time high of $407,500, an increase of 4.7% from a year earlier.
“How is it possible that home sales can be this low, considering that the U.S. population has increased by more than 70 million over this period from 1995 to today?” asked Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s chief economist. “One can partly answer that question because of the affordability issue. Record-high home prices and mortgage rates have risen, but also lack of inventory.”
The U.S. housing market has been in a sales slump dating back to 2022 when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage surged to a 23-year high of nearly 8% in October 2023 and briefly fell to a 2-year low last September, but has been mostly hovering around 7%, according to mortgage buyer Freddie Mac.
The buying power of Americans now facing higher costs to borrow money for homes that have soared in value has been significantly stunted. With so few homes up for sale, millions of would-be homebuyers have found themselves on the sidelines.
At the end of December, there were just 1.15 million homes on the market, NAR said. While that was up 16.2% from a year earlier, the inventory remained well below the annual historical average of about 1.98 million, according to data going back to 1999.
The available inventory at the end of last month amounts to a 3.3-month supply, going by the current sales pace. In a more balanced market between buyers and sellers, there is a 4- to 6-month supply.
“This means that the problems in the U.S. housing market continue to worsen in terms of availability of homes for sale and the upward pressure on home prices,” Eugenio Aleman, chief economist at Raymond James, wrote in a research note.
Many factors have contributed to the housing shortage, including more than a decade of below-average new home construction and homeowners hanging on to their properties longer. And while President Donald Trump made increasing the housing supply one of his election campaign platforms, there are no quick fixes.
“Over the past decade, the U.S. has averaged about 5.2 million home sales annually,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS. “It is going to take years before we are back at that level, maybe not even until the 2030s. The lack of inventory is the key constraint.”
A sharp drop in the mortgage rate boosted the purchasing power of Americans in 2020 and 2021. While many economists predict that the average rate on a 30-year mortgage will ease this year, they generally don’t expect it to fall below 6%, about twice what it was five years ago.
When mortgage rates ease, they can encourage home shoppers. A pullback in rates last fall helped home sales increase every month in the last three months of the year.
Home sales in December rose 2.2% from the previous month on a seasonally adjusted basis to a 4.24 million annual pace, NAR said. That topped the 4.2 million pace forecast by analysts polled by FactSet. Sales rose 9.3% in December versus the same month last year.
The median home sales price rose for the 18th consecutive month in December to $404,000, up 6% from a year earlier.
Limited inventory, especially in the more affordable price range of a given market, helps drive prices higher. That’s one reason many first-time homebuyers, who don’t have any home equity to put toward their down payment, continue to struggle.
They accounted for 31% of all homes sold last month, up from 30% in November and 29% in December 2023. However, the annual share of first-time buyers was 24%. It’s been 40% historically.
As inflation keeps the cost of essentials high in the US, many Americans will be looking for ways to spend less on their food shop. While the average household spends almost eight percent of its income on groceries, a recent study shows how people on some diets are saving more than others.
To find out which dietary types are most expensive, CouponBirds worked out the average price of a basket of common groceries at Walmart, Kroger, and Target, then made those same baskets for vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, lactose-free, gluten-fre,e and halal diets.
The vegetarian diet is the most affordable in the study, with groceries costing just $798.32 a month, compared to $928.68 for an unrestricted diet — that's an average monthly saving of $130.36.
Going gluten-free, on the other hand, will have you facing the priciest grocery bill overall: a whopping $1,039.88 per month, on average.
Shopping for a vegetarian (-$130.36), pescatarian (-$55), or vegan (-$34.24) diet is much cheaper than shopping for an unrestricted one. Conversely, lactose-free (+$46.72), gluten-free (+$111.20) and halal (+$37.44) diets are all significantly pricier than one without restrictions.
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Like most presidents, Donald Trump faces an economy that seldom bends to political ambitions.
The Republicans have promised strong growth, high tariffs, income tax cuts, and booming oilfields. But despite the solid job market and low 4.1% unemployment rate, he has to contend with headwinds like inflation, a budget deficit, increased tensions over trade, the fallout from his plans to curtail immigration, and a persistent wealth gap.
Each of these issues could help to shape how voters feel about a president who returned to the White House with the specific goal of fixing the economy.
For his part, Trump wants to blame all the challenges before him on his predecessor, Joe Biden, who in turn blamed Trump in 2021 for the problems his own administration had to tackle.
“This begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration,” Trump told the World Economic Forum on Thursday.
Here are five economic forces that could shape the first year of Trump’s presidency:
For voters, the price still isn’t right
Whipping inflation is easier said than done.
In AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of last year’s electorate, 4 in 10 voters called inflation the “single most important factor” in their choice for president. About two-thirds of this group voted for Trump — a sign he owes his victory in large part to the high cost of groceries, gasoline, housing, autos, and other goods.
Republicans often hit Biden hard on egg prices. But Democrats could use similar attacks on Trump. Over the past year, coffee costs have risen just 1% for U.S. consumers, but the International Monetary Fund has the price of the actual beans climbing 55% in a sign that lattes, espressos, and plain old cups of joe could soon cost more.
Then there’s housing. Voters are still frustrated by high mortgage rates and prices staying elevated due to a shortage of properties. Shelter is 37% of the consumer price index. Price increases for housing have eased, but shelter costs are still rising at 4.6% a year, compared with annual increases averaging 3.3% before the pandemic.
Trump is betting that more energy production can cut into inflation rates, but domestic production is already near record levels, according to the government.
Which tariffs are really coming
Trump says 25% tariffs are coming for Mexican and Canadian imports as soon as Feb. 1. He’s also talked about additional tariffs of 10% on Chinese goods. His stated goal is to stop illegal border crossings and the flow of chemicals used to make drugs such as fentanyl.
For Trump, tariffs are a diplomatic tool for his policy goals. But they’re also a threat possibly meant to jumpstart trade talks. They’re also a revenue raiser that he claims could bring trillions of dollars into the treasury.
Trump did increase tariffs during his first term, with revenue collection more than doubling to an annual rate of $85.4 billion, which might sound like a lot but was equal to just 0.4% of the gross domestic product. Multiple analyses by the Budget Lab at Yale and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, among others, say the threatened tariffs would increase costs for a typical family in a way that effectively raises taxes.
What really matters is whether Trump delivers on his threats. That is why Ben Harris, a former Biden adviser who is now director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution, says voters should focus on average tariff rates.
“Trade is really tricky,” Harris said. “But in broad terms, look at what he does and not what he says.”
What happens with the national debt
Trump likes to blame inflation on the national debt, saying Biden’s policies flooded the U.S. economy with more money than it could absorb. But about 22% of the $36 trillion outstanding total debt originated from the policies of Trump’s first term, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog.
Paul Winfree, a former Trump staffer who is now president and CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Center, warned in a recent analysis that the U.S. is getting too close for comfort to its fiscal limits. His analysis suggests that if Trump can preserve 3% growth he could extend his expiring 2017 tax cuts while keeping the debt sufficiently stable by cutting spending $100 billion to $140 billion a year.
The risk is that higher borrowing costs and debt can limit what Trump does while keeping borrowing costs high for consumers. Lawmakers who once viewed the debt as a problem years away increasingly see it as something to address now.
“One of the biggest vibe shifts I’m picking up on now among policymakers is they’re beginning to realize the long-term is today,” Winfree said.
Winfree said the key number to watch is the interest rates charged on U.S. debt — which will tell the public if investors think the amount of borrowing is problematic. Interest on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note is at roughly 4.6%, up a full percentage point since September.
Immigrants are still needed to fill jobs
Trump’s executive orders are a clear crackdown on immigration — and that could be a drag on economic growth and cause monthly job gains to slow. Trump often frames immigration as a criminal and national security issue by focusing on people crossing the border illegally.
But economies that can’t add enough workers are at risk of stagnating — and the U.S. labor market at this stage needs immigrants as part of the jobs mix. About 84% of America’s net population growth last year came from immigrants, according to the Census Bureau. That’s 2.8 million immigrants.
“They not only work in the economy, but they spend in the economy,” said Satyam Panday, chief U.S. economist at S&P Global Ratings. “Their spending is somebody else’s income in the economy.”
If Trump were simply to put immigration back at his 2017 and 2019 averages of 750,000 immigrants annually, growth could slow from an estimated 2.7% last year to 2% going forward, Panday’s analysis found. The construction, agriculture leisure, and hospitality industries would probably struggle to find employees.
In other words, it’s worth monitoring the monthly jobs report and immigration flows.
Mind the wealth gap
Trump is going to have to figure out how to balance the interests of billionaires with those of his blue-collar voters. His inaugural events included several of the world’s wealthiest men: Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault. Each is worth roughly $200 billion or more, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index.
Scott Ellis, a member of the group Patriotic Millionaires, said it’s worth monitoring just how much their wealth increases under Trump. This year, as of Friday, Arnault’s net worth has risen $23 billion, Bezos is up by $15 billion, Zuckerberg is up by $18 billion and Musk’s wealth has risen by $6 billion. Those are all monthly increases.
By contrast, the most recent available Census Bureau data show that the median U.S. household wealth rose $9,600 in 2021-2022, to $176,500.