‘Oh Wow!’ CNN Anchor Stunned by New Inflation Surge Amid Trump War — ‘Triple’ Previous Month

CNN anchor John Berman was stunned by a new inflation report that showed a sharp increase from the previous month — the first such report since President Donald Trump started the Iran War.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its CPI (Consumer Price Index) report on Friday morning, which showed the early effects of the war that began on the last weekend of February:

0.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in March, after rising 0.3 percent in February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.3 percent before seasonal adjustment.

On Friday’s edition of CNN News Central, Berman exclaimed, “Oh wow!” as CNN senior business reporter Matt Egan put the chart up on the wall:

JOHN BERMAM: Matt Egan here with the details on this, again, pretty big increase.

CNN BUSINESS REPORTER MATT EGAN: Yeah, John, look, we knew the war hit this economy like an earthquake. This is the first damage assessment and it’s not looking good. The fingerprints of the conflict all over this inflation report.

So consumer prices up by point nine percent month over month. That is triple the prior monthly inflation rate! And that is the highest in any month in almost four years.

You got to go back to June 20, 22, back when gas was at five dollars a gallon, the annual inflation rate bumped up to three point three percent. That’s almost a full percentage point increase.

That is, when you look at the trend for annual inflation, look at that!

JOHN BERMAM: Oh wow!

CNN BUSINESS REPORTER MATT EGAN: Going almost straight up. That’s not what you want to see.

JOHN BERMAM: Wow.

CNN BUSINESS REPORTER MATT EGAN: In fact, John, that’s the highest annual inflation rate. Yeah, look at, look that. Moving the wrong direction. Highest annual inflation rates, as you mentioned, in almost two years. And 3.3%. This is the highest annual inflation rate for any month of either of President Trump’s presidencies.

And remember, you’re targeting 2%, so not what you wanna see.

As far as why this happened, as you might imagine. A lot of this big increase in month over month was driven by the fact that gasoline went up at a historic pace, right? The BLS says that about three quarters of this monthly inflation rate increase is directly linked to gasoline.

Gas prices up by 21 percent between February and March. That’s the most in any month since they started tracking this back in 1967.

One other thing to call out here is airfare. Airfare got up more expensive significantly, almost 3% more expensive month over month. But because jet fuel prices have basically doubled. We’re going to probably see higher and higher airfare coming through. So that’s not the whole story here. So you put it all together and you got the worst inflation report in years.

Watch above via CNN News Central.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!