Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi lamented what could’ve been, if President Donald Trump hadn’t waged war on trade and immigration.

In a social media post on Sunday, he noted that prices have surged since the pandemic and are continuing to climb at an “uncomfortably quick pace,” with the country now suffering an affordability crisis.

“Consumer price inflation is near 3%, well above the Fed’s inflation target, and everything points to even higher inflation dead-ahead,” Zandi said. “It didn’t have to be this way.”

To be sure, inflation has cooled sharply since hitting 9% in 2022, and Trump’s tariffs haven’t stoked inflation as much as anticipated. But the annual rate has still marched higher since he imposed global tariffs in April.

The most recent data from the Bureau of Labo

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