Transitory inflation talk is back. But economists say higher prices here to remain

Global markets have taken heart in recent weeks from data indicating that inflation could have peaked, but economists warn against the return of the “transitory” inflation narrative.

Stocks bounced when October’s U.S. consumer price index got here in below expectations earlier this month, as investors began to bet on an easing of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate of interest hikes.

While most economists expect a major general decline in headline inflation rates in 2023, many are doubtful that this can herald a fundamental disinflationary trend.

Paul Hollingsworth, chief European economist at BNP Paribas, warned investors on Monday to beware the return of “Team Transitory,” a reference to the college of thought that projected rising inflation rates in the beginning of the 12 months can be fleeting.

The Fed itself was a proponent of this view, and Chairman Jerome Powell eventually issued a mea culpa accepting that the central bank had misread the situation.

“Reviving the ‘transitory’ inflation narrative might sound tempting, but underlying inflation is more likely to remain elevated by past standards,” Hollingsworth said in a research note, adding that upside risks to the headline rate next 12 months are still present, including a possible recovery in China.

“Big swings in inflation highlight one among the important thing features of the worldwide regime shift that we consider is underway: greater volatility of inflation,” he added.

The French bank expects a “historically large” fall in headline inflation rates next 12 months, with just about all regions seeing lower inflation than in 2022, reflecting a mixture of base effects — the negative contribution to annual inflation rate occurring as month-on-month changes shrink — and dynamics between supply and demand shift.

Hollingsworth noted that this might revive the “transitory” narrative” next 12 months, or not less than a risk that investors “extrapolate the inflationary trends that emerge next 12 months as an indication that inflation is rapidly returning to the ‘old’ normal.”

These narratives could translate into official predictions from governments and central banks, he suggested, with the U.K.’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) projecting outright deflation in 2025-26 in “striking contrast to the present market RPI fixings,” and the Bank of England forecasting significantly below-target medium-term inflation.

The skepticism a couple of return to normal inflation levels was echoed by Deutsche Bank. Chief Investment Officer Christian Nolting told CNBC last week that the market’s pricing for central bank cuts within the second half of 2023 were premature.

“Searching through our models, we predict yes, there may be a gentle recession, but from an inflation standpoint,” we predict there are second-round effects,” Nolting said.

He pointed to the seventies as a comparable period when the Western world was rocked by an energy crisis, suggesting that second-round effects of inflation arose and central banks “cut too early.”

“So from our perspective, we predict inflation goes to be lower next 12 months, but additionally higher than in comparison with previous years, so we’ll stay at higher levels, and from that perspective, I believe central banks will stay put and never cut very fast,” Nolting added.

Reasons to be cautious

Some significant price increases through the Covid-19 pandemic were widely considered not to really be “inflation,” but a results of relative shifts reflecting specific supply and demand imbalances, and BNP Paribas believes the identical is true in reverse.

As such, disinflation or outright deflation in some areas of the economy mustn’t be taken as indicators of a return to the old inflation regime, Hollingsworth urged.

What’s more, he suggested that corporations could also be slower to regulate prices downward than they were to extend them, given the effect of surging costs on margins over the past 18 months.

Although goods inflation will likely slow, BNP Paribas sees services inflation as stickier partially on account of underlying wage pressures.

“Labour markets are historically tight and – to the extent that there has likely been a structural element to this, particularly within the U.K. and U.S. (e.g. the rise in inactivity on account of long-term sickness within the UK) – we expect wage growth to remain relatively elevated by past standards,” Hollingsworth said.

China’s Covid policy has recaptured headlines in recent days, and stocks in Hong Kong and the mainland bounced on Tuesday after Chinese health authorities reported a recent uptick in senior vaccination rates, which is regarded by experts as crucial to reopening the economy.

BNP Paribas projects that a gradual leisure of China’s zero-Covid policy could possibly be inflationary for the remainder of the world, as China has been contributing little to global supply constraints in recent months and an easing of restrictions is “unlikely to materially boost supply.”

“Against this, a stronger recovery in Chinese demand is more likely to put upward pressure on global demand (for commodities particularly) and thus, all else equal, fuel inflationary pressures,” Hollingsworth said.

An additional contributor is the acceleration and accentuation of the trends of decarbonization and deglobalization caused by the war in Ukraine, he added, since each are more likely to heighten medium-term inflationary pressures.

BNP maintains that the shift within the inflation regime just isn’t nearly where price increases settle, however the volatility of inflation that will likely be emphasized by big swings over the subsequent one to 2 years.

“Admittedly, we predict inflation volatility continues to be more likely to fall from its current extremely high levels. Nonetheless, we don’t expect it to return to the varieties of levels that characterised the ‘great moderation’,” Hollingsworth said.