Trump ‘loves the inflation?’ Good News — there’s plenty more coming

Asked about the latest Consumer Price Index report showing inflation hitting 4.2 percent, a three-year high, President Trump gave an answer that deserves to run on a loop in attack ads from now until November: “You know what I really love?” he said. “I love the inflation.” The war with Iran, he explained, is the only thing propping up prices, so once it ends, inflation is “going to come down like a rock.”

If the president genuinely loves inflation, then he is in luck, because we are about to get a great deal more of it. No peace deal can change that. The war’s inflationary effects cannot be simply switched off at a signing ceremony.

The first hit to our pocketbooks already landed, at the pump. While the president maintains a peace agreement will bring immediate relief here, the truth is that we can expect it to keep hurting for months after the strait of Hormuz opens. Economists actually have a name for the phenomenon Trump is betting against — “rockets and feathers.” This term was coined to express how prices in concentrated industries rise like a rocket when costs spike, only to drift down like a feather when cost pressures finally ease.

Gasoline is the quintessential example of an industry where prices move in this pattern. Research from the Federal Trade Commission found that retail gas prices rise more than four times faster than they fall. This isn’t the product of some dark corporate conspiracy. When a massive, visible shock hits an........

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