by Calculated Risk on 4/13/2025 08:31:00 AM

The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index for March will be released on April 30th. The data released so far suggests the PCE inflation will be soft in March.

From Goldman Sachs economists:

The producer price index (PPI), the PPI excluding food and energy, and the PPI excluding food, energy, and trade were all below consensus expectations in March. The components relevant for core PCE were soft. Based on the details in the PPI and CPI reports, we estimate that the core PCE price index rose 0.08% in March (vs. our expectation of 0.13% before today's PPI report), corresponding to a year-over-year rate of +2.52%.

And from BofA:

[W]e are tracking core PCE to rise by 0.1% m/m (0.08% unrounded) in March. This would be a notable deceleration from the first two months of the year. However, February is likely to be revised up significantly to 0.5% m/m due to a very large upward revision to portfolio management. As a result, we expect y/y core PCE to fall to 2.6% from an upwardly revised 2.9%.

This is further improvement progress on inflation.  If policy had remained unchanged, we'd probably be celebrating a "soft landing".  However, the tariffs will likely impact prices in May (the data will be released in June).

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