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Wal-Mart CEO Sees Inflation Ahead; Do You?

They're likely to push other prices up too: Tuesday's pump prices in Portland, Ore.
Rick Bowmer
/
AP
They're likely to push other prices up too: Tuesday's pump prices in Portland, Ore.

"Serious" inflation is going to start hitting consumers in their wallets this summer, Wal-Mart's U.S. CEO tells USA Today.

"We're seeing cost increases starting to come through at a pretty rapid rate," Bill Simon says, and retailers are going to have to pass some of them along. Among the pressure points, obviously: Higher fuel prices, which then push up transportation costs.

Inflation has been pretty much in check since the early '80s. The last time the consumer price index rose in double digits was 1981's 10.3 percent gain. The strongest increase in recent years was 2008's 3.8 percent.

Once "inflation expectations" get into business executives' and consumers' minds, they can become self-fulfilling prophecies as folks buy now in part out of fear that prices will be even higher later — fueling demand and putting more upward pressure on prices.

Of course the still-weak labor market and recent dips in consumer confidence may dampen any such tendencies.

This makes us wonder:

Note: That's just a question, not a scientific survey. We'll keep it open until the end of the day on Friday.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.