Michael Zezas: Evaluating Anti-Inflation Measures

As inflation remains top of mind from Wall Street to the White House, policy makers continue to propose possible actions to fight inflation, but will these proposals ever be enacted?

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Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Head of Public Policy Research and Municipal Strategy for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the intersection between U.S. public policy and financial markets. It's Wednesday, June 22nd, at 10 a.m. in New York. 

Main Street and Wall Street agree that inflation is a problem. And of course, Washington, DC continues to take notice. The White House and Democratic leadership continues to press publicly that they're taking inflation seriously and pursuing a variety of options to slow rising prices in the economy. This includes today's news that the White House is endorsing a plan for a gas tax holiday, which would need congressional approval. Not surprisingly, then, investors have been asking us a lot lately about policy options that have been floated in news headlines as possible inflation fighters. In short, we think many proposals will remain simply that, proposals, keeping pressure on the Fed to be the inflation fighter. 

Why won't most proposals be enacted? Simply put, most options on the table can't get enough votes in Congress to be enacted due to political concerns, effectiveness concerns, and sometimes both. Take the gas tax holiday proposal. Key Republican senators have already voiced opposition to the move, as have moderates in the Democratic caucus, on concerns that the holiday would have only a limited impact on prices at the pump, while steering money away from infrastructure maintenance. 

Accordingly, you might see the administration take some actions on its own. For example, there have been many headlines about the White House considering easing tariffs on imports from China. But in our view, any tariff reduction is likely to be temporary and small in scope, focusing on a subset of consumer goods rather than blanket tariff reductions, as administration is likely reticent to do too much on tariff reduction without a reciprocal concession from China. Given that independent economists estimate that a blanket tariff removal would only reduce inflation by a few tenths of a percent, this smaller scale action would not meaningfully impact key inflation measures like CPI. 

So that means the Fed remains the main inflation fighter in DC. And fight they will, in the view of our economists, who expect they will hike rates another 2% over the balance of this year in order to curb economic activity. For investors, that means a higher chance of recession, and in the view of our U.S. equity strategy team, some remaining downside for stock prices in the near term. 

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