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Aug. 13, 2025 19:02-19:06 - CSPAN
03:53
Washington Journal Courtenay Brown
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mimi geerges
cspan 00:39
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Speaker Time Text
mimi geerges
Joining us now to talk about President Trump's economic policies is Courtney Brown.
She's Senior Economics Reporter for Axios.
Courtney, welcome.
unidentified
Thank you for having me.
mimi geerges
Let's start with the inflation numbers.
They just came out yesterday morning.
What are they and where were they expected to be?
unidentified
So the inflation numbers were kind of hot.
They weren't super hot, but they were a little warm.
And they showed that President Trump's tariff policy is starting to impact consumer prices.
But you kind of have to lift up the hood of the report and dig into certain categories to see it.
So categories like furniture, categories like apparel, those are the categories that economists have been watching for the last few months for signs of businesses passing on tariff-related costs to consumers.
mimi geerges
And does this indicate that they are passing along those tariff costs?
At least somewhat.
unidentified
But this is the big question for the Federal Reserve, right?
Is it a one-time price hike?
They take the cost of the tariff, they pass it on to consumers, the price goes up one time, or is it a continuous kind of cycle of price hikes?
That's what the Fed doesn't want to see.
Economists at the Fed are starting to come around to this idea that maybe it will just be a one-time price hike.
Of course, painful for consumers, but less of an inflationary problem.
mimi geerges
What about groceries and gas?
Where were those?
unidentified
So the headline consumer price index was actually down relative to June because gasoline prices fell, gasoline and energy prices fell.
But that is, of course, what consumers think about most, gasoline prices, grocery prices.
But economic policymakers actually like to watch the core CPI number that excludes energy and food costs.
And that was the one that was a little hot.
So we're seeing some relief on the energy front and on the grocery price front.
mimi geerges
Let's talk about President Trump's deal with chipmakers NVIDIA and AMD.
Of course, NVIDIA is the $4 trillion company.
Yes.
Quite big.
What is that deal?
So explain the deal and what it means.
unidentified
So NVIDIA makes, NVIDIA and AMD make the crucial chips that we need to really get ahead of the AI revolution, right?
They make the chips that power data centers.
And President Trump said earlier this year, actually, I don't think it will be in our national security best interest if you sell these chips in China.
And what happened was NVIDIA and AMD cut a deal with the White House over the weekend.
The Financial Times reported it on Sunday that if they pay 15% of some of the revenue they make from their chip sales in China, they can obtain the export licenses to sell these chips in China.
And it's remarkable.
We've never seen a deal with the private sector and the government like this.
So it was a really eye-popping there's questions about that.
There's questions about that.
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