The Grocery Receipt Tells a Different Story Than the Inflation Report
Prices are cooling in the data, and the public is more worried than ever. The contradiction dissolves the moment you stop treating inflation as one thing. Right now, in 2025 and into 2026, the price pressure people feel most is back where the whole episode started: food and energy, with goods alongside. The cause this time is geopolitical rather than pandemic logistics . Tariffs have added up to 0.7 percentage points to goods prices over the past year and a half. The war involving Iran has pushed energy costs up, since roughly 20 percent of the world's oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been under blockade for several months. And because somewhere between a quarter and a third of globally traded fertilizer passes through that same strait, food prices have climbed too. These are the prices households meet weekly and sometimes daily, at the pump and the checkout, which is why this latest pressure lands so hard on the public mood. And that brings up a puzzle worth sitti...