In the days ahead, Kevin Warsh will likely get more excuses to hold off on the rate hikes he was never going to deliver in the first place.

If there was a silver lining in last month’s evasive press conference (which even he privately admitted could’ve gone better), it was the extent to which Warsh’s dissembling lent the lie to his claims of independence from Donald Trump’s autocratic inclinations. Subsequent reports suggesting Warsh and Trump have spoken “repeatedly,” to quote The Wall Street Journal‘s account, on the phone over the past three months only underscore the point.

Simply put: Warsh and Trump have spoken more times than the Fed’s held meetings since May, and if Warsh decides to reduce the number of policy gatherings the Fed holds, the same will likely be true for the entirety of his tenure as chair.

But from the perspective of data-driven policymaking (if certainly not from the perspective of preserving institutional independence), that’s all a moot point in the wake of the BLS’s monthly labor market update, which showed the US economy lost jobs in July. Revisions suggested hiring during May and June was far slower than previously reported.

Notwithstanding that the intractable stalemate in the Gulf could keep a floor under crude — thereby ensuring headline inflation stays volatile and, just as importantly, keeping the conflict top of mind for US voters by way of the war premium embedded in pump prices — it’s unlikely that consumer price growth as measured by aggregates Warsh is actively trying to deemphasize and supplant will override faltering jobs growth for the purposes of putting rate hikes on the table.

If Warsh leans, publicly, privately or both, on the official jobs data to make the case against hiking rates while implicitly casting doubt on government measures of inflation as tallied by the very same bureaus and agencies, the contradiction will testify to his Trumpian instincts: The data, just like the news, is “real” when it supports the administration’s agenda, “fake” when it doesn’t.

It’s with all of that in mind that the BLS will probably say inflation was steady in July from June. Wednesday’s release is expected to see the headline gauge print a 0.1% advance versus the prior month. The YoY pace will stay elevated around 1.5ppt above the Fed’s 2% goal.

Core CPI, meanwhile, is seen rising 0.2% MoM. Recall that underlying price growth actually posted a decline in June, falling -0.017%. It was the first month-to-month decline on the core gauge since May of 2020. Another cool readout would add to the case for holding rates.

On a YoY basis, the core gauge is seen rising 2.5%. That’d be the slowest since the war started. If the annual rate somehow manages an unrounded print below 2.45656%, it’d be the lowest since March of 2021.

Do note the built-in absurdity: Any YoY core print that’s close to consensus will be tantamount to telling American households that inflation has now more or less normalized, at least on the metric which matters to policymakers. That may be technically true, but it’s a “mission accomplished” claim that’d make even the staunchest defender of the Iraq War blush.

Following the CPI release, the BLS will tally up wholesale inflation for July. There too, Warsh (and equity bulls) will be looking for a second consecutive benign readout.

Recall that June’s PPI headline showed a -0.3% MoM decline, the first drop since August of 2025. The annual rate in June, despite still reflecting a very sharp advance, at least suggested a peak in the rate of change. Consensus expects a 0.2% MoM print on the headline final demand gauge for July and an unchanged 12-month rate.

On Friday, market participants will get a sense of the US spending impulse at the beginning of Q3 courtesy of the Commerce Department’s retail sales release, which should show a small advance for July. A consensus print — a 0.2% headline gain — would imply overall, inflation-adjusted spending was flat last month from June.

As ever, what matters in the retail sales release is the control group. It printed a solid 0.5% gain in June and the three-month average annualized pace of control group sales is still running north of 9%, healthy indeed and consistent with the message from the Q2 GDP release, which suggested underlying demand remains very strong in America, jobs or no jobs. (Remember: America’s notorious spendthrifts don’t even need money to keep spending, let alone jobs. To quote Evelle: “You’re young and you got your health, what you want with a job?”)

Also on deck in the US this week: Existing home sales (seen showing a decline for July) and the preliminary read on University of Michigan sentiment for August (seen at 54.6, basically unchanged and indicative of abysmal, if marginally improving, household moods).