The reporting and the claim
A recent Guardian piece headlined ‘We don’t have inflation’? Five charts show the US economic reality of Trump’s second term so far used visual evidence to challenge a simple political assertion: that inflation is no longer a problem. Two additional news and opinion pieces published around the same time framed a similar conclusion, arguing that rising costs remain a central economic vulnerability for the president’s second-term narrative.
Those outlets do not speak with a single voice about precise numbers or cause; instead, they use charts and trend lines to show variation across commonly watched measures of prices, wages, and household experience. The basic point reported across these pieces is that while some headline indicators have eased from earlier peaks, multiple measures that matter to consumers and markets still show strain.
What the charts and coverage emphasize (and what they do not claim)
The Guardian’s package centers on five charts as a visual way to illustrate where price pressures remain visible. According to the article’s framing, those charts compare different series that people invoke when they argue inflation is solved — for example, a headline consumer-price series versus other measures that capture essentials, regional differences, or household-level cost experience.
Companion coverage and commentary from other outlets picked up the same thread: that political rhetoric about “no inflation” can be true in a narrow statistical sense while missing persistent increases in things households still pay for or in expectations among businesses and consumers. Those opinion pieces argued the political problem is familiar: when voters still feel squeezed, political messaging that treats the issue as past tense is vulnerable.
Importantly, the published pieces stop short of asserting a single, definitive measure of inflation is correct for every purpose. Instead, they use multiple indicators to show how different measures tell different parts of the story — which is the same methodological point economists often make about inflation’s complexity.
Why multiple measures matter for voters and policy
Price statistics are not a single dial. Headline consumer-price indexes can move differently from so-called core measures, which strip out volatile food and energy, and those can move differently from producer prices, housing-cost indexes, or wage-adjusted measures of household purchasing power. The outlets reporting on the five charts emphasized that relying on only one statistic can understate how inflation is experienced in everyday life.
That matters politically because voters respond to what they pay at the grocery store, for rent, or for childcare, not to a single statistical abstract. It also matters for policy. Policymakers such as central bankers and fiscal decision-makers monitor a suite of indicators when setting interest rates or designing relief measures; the presence of persistent price pressure in some parts of the economy can keep monetary policy tighter or complicate fiscal planning.
How to read visual economics and what to watch next
Charts are a powerful way to see trends, but they require context. A short-term uptick in one series can look dramatic on a week-to-week chart while representing a small annual change. Conversely, slow but steady divergence between wages and costs can be harder to spot without a multi-year view. The outlets presenting the five-chart package used side-by-side visuals to help readers see those distinctions.
For readers trying to decide what matters now, the reporting suggests watching a few kinds of data releases over the coming weeks: the regular consumer-price and producer-price updates, payroll and wage-growth reports, housing-cost indicators, and measures of consumer expectations. Journalists and analysts will continue to use charts to compare these series and test whether the broader narrative that “inflation is over” holds up across the indicators people actually use to budget.
What this coverage does — and does not — settle
The recent articles do not produce a single new dataset or a new official statistical determination. Rather, they assemble existing public series into a visual argument: some widely watched aggregates have stabilized, but other price measures and household experiences remain elevated. That is why the headlines push back on an absolute phrasing of the political claim rather than claiming to overturn every inflation statistic.
Readers should treat these pieces as explanations of complexity more than definitive arithmetic. They are useful for understanding why disagreement exists between political assertions and everyday experience, and for showing which pieces of the economic picture deserve attention. For policymakers, markets, and voters, the practical takeaway is that a headline statistic is only part of the story — and that multiple charts can change how that story feels.