US wholesale inflation fell last month as price pressures eased, but trade war clouds outlook

WASHINGTON — U.S. wholesale prices fell last month in another sign that inflationary pressures are easing. But President Donald Trump’s trade wars cloud the outlook.

The Labor Department said Friday that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — fell 0.4% from February, first drop since October 2023. Compared with a year earlier, producer prices rose 2.7%, down from a 3.2% year-over-year gain in February and much lower than the 3.3% economists had forecast. Gasoline prices fell 11.1% from February and egg prices, which had skyrocketed because of bird flu, plummeted 21.3%.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core wholesale inflation fell 0.1% from February, the first drop since July. Compared to a year earlier, core producer prices were up 3.3% and lower than economists had forecast.

The report comes a day after the Labor Department delivered good news on inflation at the consumer level. Its consumer price index rose just 2.4% last month from March 2024, the smallest year-over-year gain since September. Core consumer prices posted the smallest year-over-year increase in nearly four years.

The inflation outlook is muddied by Trump’s trade wars. He’s imposing a 145% tax — a tariff — on Chinese imports and is hitting most of the rest of the world’s imports with a 10% levy that might go up after 90 days.

The trade barriers are widely expected to raise prices as importers attempt to pass along their higher costs.