CSPAN - Washington Journal Courtenay Brown
Aired: 2025-08-13
Duration: 03:53


=== Inflation Numbers Are Hot (02:25) ===

[00:00:44]  Joining us now to talk about President Trump's economic policies is Courtney Brown.
[00:00:48]  She's Senior Economics Reporter for Axios.
[00:00:50]  Courtney, welcome.
[00:00:51]  Thank you for having me.
[00:00:52]  Let's start with the inflation numbers.
[00:00:54]  They just came out yesterday morning.
[00:00:56]  What are they and where were they expected to be?
[00:00:58]  So the inflation numbers were kind of hot.
[00:01:02]  They weren't super hot, but they were a little warm.
[00:01:06]  And they showed that President Trump's tariff policy is starting to impact consumer prices.
[00:01:14]  But you kind of have to lift up the hood of the report and dig into certain categories to see it.
[00:01:19]  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.
[00:01:32]  And does this indicate that they are passing along those tariff costs?
[00:01:38]  At least somewhat.
[00:01:38]  But this is the big question for the Federal Reserve, right?
[00:01:41]  Is it a one-time price hike?
[00:01:44]  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?
[00:01:53]  That's what the Fed doesn't want to see.
[00:01:55]  Economists at the Fed are starting to come around to this idea that maybe it will just be a one-time price hike.
[00:02:02]  Of course, painful for consumers, but less of an inflationary problem.
[00:02:06]  What about groceries and gas?
[00:02:09]  Where were those?
[00:02:10]  So the headline consumer price index was actually down relative to June because gasoline prices fell, gasoline and energy prices fell.
[00:02:20]  But that is, of course, what consumers think about most, gasoline prices, grocery prices.
[00:02:27]  But economic policymakers actually like to watch the core CPI number that excludes energy and food costs.
[00:02:34]  And that was the one that was a little hot.
[00:02:36]  So we're seeing some relief on the energy front and on the grocery price front.
[00:02:40]  Let's talk about President Trump's deal with chipmakers NVIDIA and AMD.
[00:02:45]  Of course, NVIDIA is the $4 trillion company.
[00:02:50]  Yes.
[00:02:51]  Quite big.
[00:02:52]  What is that deal?
[00:02:53]  So explain the deal and what it means.

=== NVIDIA's Deal with the White House (00:58) ===

[00:02:56]  So NVIDIA makes, NVIDIA and AMD make the crucial chips that we need to really get ahead of the AI revolution, right?
[00:03:07]  They make the chips that power data centers.
[00:03:10]  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.
[00:03:21]  And what happened was NVIDIA and AMD cut a deal with the White House over the weekend.
[00:03:27]  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.
[00:03:42]  And it's remarkable.
[00:03:43]  We've never seen a deal with the private sector and the government like this.
[00:03:47]  So it was a really eye-popping there's questions about that.
[00:03:52]  There's questions about that.