One of the big ongoing debates this year in both economic and political circles has been whether, when, and how rapidly Donald Trump’s policies, and particularly his tariff program, would boost consumer prices, subjecting him to the same inflation peril that Joe Biden experienced. For months after Trump’s initial “Liberation Day” tariffs announcements, experts tried to explain why inflation statistics were still low. Not many actual economists bought Trump’s own argument that foreign producers and American importers would just pay tariffs out of their own pockets and leave consumers alone. But there have been other explanations, ranging from the wildly gyrating on-again, off-again nature of Trump’s decisions on tariffs, to built-up pre-Liberation Day inventories, to partial validation of the MAGA theory that importers value American markets too much to let Americans fully feel the pain.

However, now there are signs the long-awaited inflationary wave may finally be landing on our shores, as The........

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