US consumer inflation ticked up to a 3.0% year-over-year rate in September, the highest rate since January. Core CPI held steady at 3.0%. “The immediate dangers from Trump 2.0 tariff policies have not yet fed through to inflation overall,” wrote Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds. “The market will likely hold their applause, however, as one reason inflation is held in check may be due to the economic slowdown seen in many labor market indicators.” Eric Gerster, chief investment officer at AlphaCore Wealth Advisory, said the CPI report “certainly clears the way for the Fed to cut rates next week as they were going to anyway. It certainly leads to a higher expectation of at least two more rate cuts by March.”

President Trump, traveling in Asia, said China trade deal will be finalized in days. Speaking to journalists as he flew to Japan, he predicted that a U.S.-China trade agreement would be done before he returned to Washington.

AI spending by the largest tech firms is masking the struggles of many smaller businesses. “I think the message that the AI economy is sort of driving up the GDP numbers is a correct one,” Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, told CNBC. “There may be weakness in the rest of the economy, or not weakness, but there may be more modest growth.”

The Federal Reserve’s policy announcement this week (Oct. 29) arrives during a data void for US econommic conditions due to the government shutdown. As a result, the central bank will be making policy decisions with far less information about economic conditions, although markets still expect that the Fed will cut rates.

Shares of several U.S.-listed rare earth miners fell on Monday as U.S. officials said they expect China to delay introducing export controls on critical minerals as part of a broader trade deal. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told NBC News’ “Meet The Press” on Sunday that Washington and Beijing were expected to reach a deal to avoid a new 100% U.S. tariff on Chinese goods, with Beijing set to defer on imposing strict rare earth export controls.

US government debt as a percentage of the economy is on track to exceed levels in both Italy and Greece for the first time this century, according to IMF forecasts. By the end of the decade, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio will rise more than 20 percentage points to reach 143.4%, surpassing previous peaks set after the pandemic.

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