Inflation accelerated in June as President Donald Trump’s tariffs started to leave a bigger imprint on the economy, keeping the Federal Reserve on track to hold interest rates steady when policymakers next meet this month.

The consumer price index rose 2.7% from a year earlier, the swiftest pace since February, data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed Tuesday. That is slightly higher than expected and up from an annual pace of 2.4% in May.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices and is seen as a reliable gauge for underlying price pressures, also shifted higher. Those prices were up 2.9% from the same time last year.

Over the course of the month, prices rose 0.3%, a notable pickup from a 0.1% increase in May. Core prices rose 0.2%.

The June data still reflects only the initial impact of Trump’s global trade war. Prices of products most exposed to tariffs, such as household furnishings, jumped 1%, significantly higher than the 0.3% rise last month. Prices for appliances, specifically, rose 1.9%, up from 0.8%. The apparel index increased 0.4%, snapping multiple months of declining prices.

Gasoline prices rose 1% in June, after falling 2.6% the previous month. Grocery prices also rose, ticking up 0.3% in June.

Economists expect price pressures to intensify over the coming months, especially if new tariffs the president has threatened against the European Union and a host of other countries in recent days are imposed Aug. 1 as planned.

“Some of these tariff costs are getting passed through,” said Stephen Juneau, an economist at Bank of America, reflecting a difficult decision with which many businesses across the country are grappling. Tariffs have forced companies to choose between absorbing the costs and cutting into their profits, or raising prices and risking the ire of customers.

Up to this point, inflation has been more muted than feared when Trump returned to the White House. That has emboldened the president and his top advisers to dismiss the latest set of warnings from economists about the damage steep tariffs could have on consumers and businesses across the country.

— New York Times

Nvidia approved for chip sales to China

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang said the technology giant has won approval from the Trump administration to sell its advanced H20 computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence to China.

The news came in a company blog post late Monday, which stated that the U.S. government had “assured” Nvidia that licenses would be granted — and that the company “hopes to start deliveries soon.”

Huang added that half of the world’s AI researchers are in China. “It’s so innovative and dynamic here in China that it’s really important that American companies are able to compete and serve the market here,” he said.

Huang recently met with President Donald Trump and other U.S. policymakers — and is in Beijing this week to attend a supply chain conference and speak with Chinese officials.

Medical debt credit protections removed

A federal judge in Texas removed a Biden-era rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would have removed medical debt from credit reports.

U.S. District Court Judge Sean Jordan of Texas’s Eastern District, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, found on Friday that CFPB is not permitted to remove medical debt from credit reports according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which protects information collected by consumer reporting agencies.

Removing medical debts from consumer credit reports was expected to increase the credit scores of millions of families by an average of 20 points, the bureau said.

The three national credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion — announced last year that they would remove medical collections under $500 from U.S. consumer credit reports. The CFPB’s rule was projected to ban all outstanding medical bills from appearing on credit reports and prohibit lenders from using the information.

— From news services