Just when inflation was getting back to a reasonable level, we have this idiot, Trump, about to bring it back.

Inflation ending doesn’t mean that prices go back to where they were — it merely means that prices stop climbing rapidly. If prices returned to, say, pre-COVID levels, that would be DEflation, which has its own set of problems we don’t want or need. The Great Depression was marked by deflation in the USA.

Tariffs could bring us the worst of both worlds — inflation and recession at the same time. This is called stagflation, and it last happened here in the 1970s, which is far enough back that the majority doesn’t remember it. I remember it, but I’m 56 years old. My memories from those days involve odd/even gasoline-rationing days, and the prices of comic books and silver climbing dramatically.

Anyone who earned a decent grade in Principles of Macroeconomics knows these things. It isn’t brain science . . . or even rocket surgery.

[Cartoon found on BlueSky.]