Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, July 17, 2026
Tiffany Wilding, PIMCO's North American Economist, clarifies that while inflation is expected to moderate, deflation (negative inflation) is not anticipated for the US. She notes that gasoline prices have fallen from their peak, and some food prices are decreasing. Wilding explains that 'inflation coming down' refers to the rate of price change, not necessarily falling prices overall.
“Well, we've already seen the national app average retail gasoline price come down off of its recent peak. Now over the last few days it's it's up again as the Middle East conflict as has kind of flared up, but we are down off of the wartime peak levels. You know, we're also seeing some various food prices that are actually falling.”
“But in general, you know, when we say inflation is coming down, you know that is the price change. And so you know, we're not expecting overall inflation in the United States to you know, to dip in a negative territory go into deflation. But we do think moderating inflation is a completely reasonable outlook to have.”