Here’s the deflation breakdown for July 2024 — in one chart
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Inflation cooled below 3% in July 2024, the first time it dropped beneath that level in more than three years.
While many areas of the U.S. economy are disinflating — meaning their prices are still rising, though at a slower rate — some have been outright deflating. That means their prices have actually declined.
Deflation has largely occurred for physical goods, though it has also appeared in categories such as airline fares, gasoline and various food items, according to the consumer price index.
These are “micro pockets” of deflation, said Joe Seydl, senior markets economist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
But the deflationary dynamic is less widespread than it was earlier in the pandemic, when the unwinding of contorted supply-and-demand dynamics made it more pronounced, economists said.
“Broadly speaking, deflation for various items is increasingly less broad-based,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.
Consumers shouldn’t expect a broad and sustained fall in prices across the U.S. economy. That generally doesn’t happen unless there’s a recession, economists said.
Why goods prices have fallen
“Core” goods — commodity prices excluding those related to food and energy — have declined by about 2% since July 2023, on average, according to CPI data.
They fell 0.3% during the month, from June to July 2024.
Demand for physical goods soared in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic as consumers were confined to their homes and couldn’t spend on things such as concerts, travel or dining out.
The health crisis also snarled global supply chains, meaning goods weren’t hitting the shelves as quickly as consumers wanted them.
Such supply-and-demand dynamics drove up prices.
The environment has changed, however.
To that point, the initial pandemic-era craze of consumers fixing up their homes and upgrading their home offices has diminished, cooling prices. Supply-chain issues have also largely unwound, economists said.
Furniture and bedding prices are down more than 5% since July 2023, according to CPI data. Prices have also fallen over the past year for dishes and flatware (down about 8%), laundry equipment (-6%), nonelectric cookware (-10%), toys (-3%), and tools and hardware (-1%), according to the CPI.
Apparel prices are also down, for men’s and women’s outerwear (-12% and -4%, respectively), and infants and toddlers’ apparel (-4%), for example.
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Prices for new and used vehicles have fallen by 1% and 11%, respectively, since July 2023. Car and truck rental prices have deflated about 6%.
Car prices were among the first to surge when the economy reopened broadly early in 2021, amid a shortage of semiconductor chips essential for manufacturing.
“Vehicle prices remain under pressure from improved inventory and elevated financing costs,” Sarah House and Aubrey George, economists at Wells Fargo Economics, wrote in a note in July.
Higher financing costs are the result of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to tame high inflation. Economists expect central bank officials to start cutting rates at their next policy meeting in September.
Outside of supply-demand dynamics, the U.S. dollar’s strength relative to other global currencies has also helped rein in prices for goods, economists said. This makes it less expensive for U.S. companies to import items from overseas, since the dollar can buy more.
Long-term forces such as globalization have also helped, by increasing imports of more lower-priced goods from China, economists said.
Deflation for airfare, food and electronics
Daniel Garrido | Moment | Getty Images
Airline fares have declined about 3% over the past year, according to CPI data.
The drop is partly attributable to a decline in jet fuel prices, said Stephen Brown, deputy chief North America economist at Capital Economics. Average aviation jet fuel prices are down about 17% from last year, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Airlines have also increased the volume of seats available on domestic routes, largely by flying bigger planes, Hayley Berg, lead economist at travel site Hopper, wrote in April.
This summer, “we’ve repeatedly seen airlines slash prices on many routes for travel in the next few months,” wrote Gunnar Olson, flight deal analyst at Thrifty Traveler. “It’s led us to declare that this is the best summer ever for travel.”
Grocery prices have fallen for items such as cereal, rice, bread, ham, fish, cheese, ice cream, potatoes, apples, bananas, margarine and snacks, according to CPI data.
Each grocery item has its own supply-and-demand dynamics that can influence pricing, economists said. For example, apple prices have deflated almost 15% in the past year due to a supply glut.
Additionally, there have been more price promotions lately at grocery stores, with a few “major retailers recently announcing price cuts that are likely to pressure competitors’ pricing,” wrote House and George of Wells Fargo.
Other categories’ deflationary dynamics may be happening only on paper.
For example, in the CPI data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics controls for quality improvements over time. Electronics such as televisions, cellphones and computers continually get better, meaning consumers generally get more for the same amount of money.
That shows up as a price decline in the CPI data.
More than $14 billion in US renewable and EV investments and 10,000 new jobs have been scrapped or put on hold since January, according to a new analysis from E2 and the Clean Economy Tracker. The reason: growing fears that the Republican-majority Congress will pull the plug on federal clean energy tax credits.
In April alone, companies backed out of $4.5 billion in battery, EV, and wind projects right before the House passed a sweeping tax and spending bill that would gut the federal tax incentives fueling the clean energy boom. E2 also found another $1.5 billion in previously unreported project cancellations from earlier in the year.
Now, with the Senate preparing to take up the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” E2 says over 10,000 clean energy jobs have already vanished.
“If the tax plan passed by the House last week becomes law, expect to see construction and investments stopping in states across the country as more projects and jobs are cancelled,” said Michael Timberlake, E2’s communications director. “Businesses are now counting on Congress to come to its senses and stop this costly attack on an industry that is essential to meeting America’s growing energy demand and that’s driving unprecedented economic growth in every part of the country.”
Ironically, it’s Republican-led congressional districts – the biggest beneficiaries of the Biden administration’s clean energy tax credits passed in 2022 – that are feeling the most pain. So far, more than $12 billion in investments and over 13,000 jobs have been canceled in GOP districts.
Through April, 61% of all clean energy projects, 72% of jobs, and 82% of investments have been in Republican districts.
Despite the rising number of cancellations, some companies are still forging ahead. In April, businesses announced nearly $500 million in new clean energy investments across six states. That includes a $400 million expansion by Corning in Michigan to make solar wafers, which is expected to create at least 400 jobs, and a $9.3 million investment from a Canadian solar equipment company in North Carolina.
If completed, the seven projects announced last month could create nearly 3,000 permanent jobs.
To date, E2 has tracked 390 major clean energy projects across 42 states and Puerto Rico since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in August 2022. In total, companies plan to invest $132 billion and hire 123,000 permanent workers.
But the report warns that momentum could grind to a halt if the House tax plan becomes law. Since the clean energy tax credits were signed into law, 45 announced projects have been canceled, downsized, or closed entirely, wiping out nearly 20,000 jobs and $16.7 billion in investments.
What’s more, Trump’s Department of Energy announced today that it was killing more than $3.7 billion in funding for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and decarbonization initiatives. Eighteen out of 24 projects were awarded through DOE’s Industrial Demonstrations Program (IDP), which was made law in the Inflation Reduction Act. It aimed to strengthen the economic competitiveness of US manufacturers in global markets demanding lower carbon emissions, while supporting US manufacturing jobs and communities.
Executive Director Jason Walsh of the BlueGreen Alliance said in a statement in response to today’s DOE announcement:
The awarded projects that DOE is seeking to kill are concentrated in rural areas and red states. American manufacturers are hungry to partner with the federal government to bolster US industry. The IDP saw $60 billion worth of applications during the program selection process, a ten-times oversubscription.
President Trump claims to be a champion of American manufacturing, but today’s announcement is further evidence that he and his Secretary of Energy are liars.
Read more: Global energy giant RWE halts US offshore wind because of Trump
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A Tesla prototype was spotted at the Fremont factory in California, sparking speculation that it’s the new “cheaper Tesla”, but it looks like a regular Model Y.
A drone operator flew over the Fremont factory this week and spotted a Tesla prototype with light camouflage on the front and back ends.
The vehicle is making a lot of people talk on social media and the media as many think it could be a new “affordable model” coming to Tesla.
Other than the camouflage, the vehicle looks just like a regular Model Y:
It’s likely one of two things: a new “stripped-down Model Y” or a Model Y Performance.
Model Y Performance is the only version that Tesla hasn’t launched since the design changeover earlier this year.
The “stripped-down Model Y” is what will replace Tesla’s upcoming “affordable models.”
We have been reporting on this new vehicle program from Tesla for a while now.
It came to life just over a year ago as a pivot for Tesla after CEO Elon Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla”. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.
Instead, Musk saw that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as Tesla faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.
We previously reported that these electric vehicles will likely look very similar to Model 3 and Model Y.
In recent months, several other media reports reinforced that, and Tesla all but confirmed it during its latest earnings call.
Considering this looks like a regular Model Y, it could be the new cheaper and less feature rich Model Y:
Some people are claiming that this vehicle looks smaller than the Model Y, but it’s difficult to tell as the black camouflage on the ends can confuse the eye.
It looks like a very similar size when it passes near other Tesla vehicles:
What do you think it is? Let us know in the comment section below.
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![Lumina hopes this 32-ton dozer makes them the Tesla of heavy equipment [video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/05/lumina_2.png?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
San Francisco-based founder Ahmed Shubber wants to emulate Elon Musk’s success in the electric construction equipment world – and he hopes his new, 32-ton electric bulldozer is enough to make the world sit up and take notice.
Since launching his company, Lumina, in 2021, Shubber has raised more than $8 million and grown the company’s global (!?) headcount to 26 people. That fruit of that team’s labor is the machine seen here. Dubbed “Moonlander,” the first-of-its-kind prototype occupies the physical footprint of something like a Caterpillar D6, but packs the blade and performance of the larger, more powerful Cat D9.
“A D6 could not push that blade,” David Wright, Lumina’s head of UK operations, told the assembled media at the Moonlander’s launch last week. “We can have that blade full of material, full dozing seven to nine cubic meters of material, for eight to 10 hours.”
Moving all that mass takes a lot of power – but getting that power back into the Moonlander’s batteries won’t take a lot of time, thanks to the machine’s 300 kW charging capability.
“Even if you spend all morning heavy dozing and you’re a bit worried about how much juice you’ve used — well, your operators are going to take a union-mandated lunch break, right?” asks Wright. “Plug it in, and in 30 minutes, you’ve put 50% of power back in again.”
Shubber says Lumina is working to raise from $20-40 million for its Series A round to develop the company’s next electric equipment asset: a 100-ton electric excavator called Blade Runner. And, in a truly Tesla-like fashion, Shubber says he’s on track to hit an ambitious $100 million revenue target sometime in the next 24 months.
And, of course, the Blade Runner will feature state-of-the-art autonomous operating technology (because: of course it will).
We’ll see how that unfolds in 2 year’s time, I guess. In the meantime, check out this Lumina promo video for Moonlander, below, then let us know what you think of Shuber’s take on an electric job site in the comments.
Lumina ML6 electric dozer video
SOURCE | IMAGES: Lumina; via Business Insider, Earthmovers Magazine.
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