Wholesale Inflation Rose More Than Expected, Driven by Fuel Costs

Wholesale inflation rose more than expected last month, driven by a big jump in fuel costs, PBS NewsHour reports. The same report calls rising prices a growing economic challenge for millions of Americans — and a growing political problem for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections. That double framing is the useful part. A fuel-cost spike is an energy story as much as a prices story, which means the month's headline number can turn on something most households never buy directly. The report treats the squeeze as household arithmetic and campaign arithmetic at once, and in a midterm season the two are hard to separate.