Core price growth on the Fed’s preferred inflation measure probably downshifted to 0.2% last month.

Or so says the collective wisdom of economists, who get paid handsomely to make wrong guesses. Nice work if you can get it.

A consensus read on the MoM core PCE print would count as the slowest of 2024, but it won’t convert a panel of born-again hawks, who’ve belatedly come around to the possibility that tipping rate cuts in November and December might’ve contributed to a rekindled inflation impulse early this year.

On a 12-month basis, core price growth likely ran at the same 2.8% pace last month as it did in March, again according to economists.

The macro narrative changes by the day. Headed into last week there was a slowdown afoot according to a succession of misses on top-tier releases, but on May 23, markets were back to trading a “no landing” following a buoyant read on services sector activity and a decline in jobless claims for NFP survey week. The 2s10s inversion is coming up on its two-year anniversary. So, who knows? Who knows where we are.

The price growth figures, due Friday, will be accompanied by an update on personal spending, which probably expanded 0.3% last month, forecasters reckon. All the usual questions apply: Are Americans’ savings buffers finally exhausted? Is the country’s mountainous pile of credit card debt trying to tell us something? What about rising delinquencies? And on and on. Recall that retail sales data covering the same month printed a woeful miss.

A day earlier (so, Thursday) the BEA will release the second estimate of Q1 GDP. The consumption component will be eyed for revisions. The same goes for the price indexes. But the data’s stale by definition. The release isn’t likely to be relevant beyond the May 30 session.

Also on deck in the US during the holiday-shortened week: Updates on the two national home price gauges (Case-Shiller and FHFA), Conference Board confidence and pending home sales. Fed speakers include Bostic, Cook, Kashkari, Logan, Mester and Williams.

Elsewhere, preliminary inflation figures out of Europe should show YoY price growth picked up slightly to 2.5% in May, while core inflation likely stuck at 2.7%. The ECB’s readying a cut next month.

China will release PMI data on Friday. Markets — and, more to the point, politicians in Western capitals — are focused on Xi’s “two-speed” recovery to the extent subdued domestic demand set against rising industrial output is a recipe for overcapacity which in turn threatens to flood foreign markets at the expense of local manufacturers.

On the off chance you haven’t noticed, many voters in Western democracies finally realized cheap goods from abroad are no substitute for good jobs at home. Unfortunately for America’s manufacturing base, that realization came about 30 years too late.