"US inflation could rise above 4%... Big Tech concentration is a source of stock-market instability"
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Summary
- Deloitte economist Kalish said US consumer inflation could jump into the 4% range due to the impact of tariffs.
- He noted that tariffs are lifting intermediate-goods prices, leading to a worsening cost structure in manufacturing and job losses.
- Kalish said the S&P 500 is increasingly concentrated in mega-cap technology companies, raising concerns about a potential AI bubble and concentrated equity-market risk.
Heard on Wall Street
(5) Ira Kalish, Deloitte economist
Tariff-driven rise in imported intermediate-goods prices
Deteriorating cost structure across manufacturing
US population decline due to immigration policy
The labor supply itself will shrink
A warning has emerged that US consumer inflation could surge into the 4% range due to the fallout from tariffs. US inflation last month was 2.7%.
Ira Kalish, Deloitte’s chief global economist (pictured), shared this view in a keynote at the National Retail Federation (NRF) event held recently in New York and in a subsequent interview with a reporter.
He pointed to tariffs as the main driver. "So far, inflation has been limited because companies are passing through only about 10% of tariff costs to consumer prices," Kalish said. He added that firms have absorbed tariff costs on the assumption they would be temporary, but if the view spreads that tariffs will be prolonged, such a strategy will be hard to sustain.
He noted that what makes the situation more problematic is that a large share of US imports are intermediate goods rather than finished products. "Tariffs are raising intermediate-goods prices and worsening the cost structure across manufacturing," Kalish said. "US manufacturers are cutting hiring to reduce costs, and manufacturing employment has been steadily declining since the tariff announcement."
He also said, "Recently, US private-sector employment growth has slowed sharply, not simply because labor demand has weakened but because the labor supply itself is shrinking." Citing the Donald Trump administration’s hardline immigration policies, he said, "An estimated about 500,000 people left the United States last year," adding that "some statistics have raised the possibility that the US population may have declined in 2025." If the US population fell in 2025 from the prior year, it would be the first time since 1918, when mass fatalities occurred due to the Spanish flu.
He also voiced concern about the possibility of an AI bubble. "If you look at the top 10 companies by market capitalization in the S&P 500, they are all technology companies," Kalish said. "Twenty years ago, the distribution was more balanced across industries such as finance, energy, consumer goods and industrials, but now risk is extremely concentrated in a small number of mega-cap technology companies."
New York=Park Shin-young, correspondent nyusos@hankyung.com
