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Tennessee has formed a venture with leading barge carrier Ingram Marine Group to create a multimodal inland river port on the Cumberland River near Interstate 24 less than a half hour’s drive from Nashville.

The public-private project was announced recently between the Tennessee Department of TransportationNashville-headquartered Ingram Marine Group and Cheatham County to develop the Ashland City River Port.

“TDOT remains committed to exploring every opportunity to strengthen our regional and national economic competitiveness by advancing infrastructure enhancements and operational innovations that alleviate congestion and remove critical freight bottlenecks,” noted Butch Eley, transportation commissioner and deputy governor.

Tennessee is providing funding to help offset construction costs to build the river port at the Cheatham County Industrial Park on Thompson Road in Ashland City. The site had been owned by the county and used to house highway and school vehicles in garages before the parcel was sold to Ingram Marine for development.

The area surrounding the future Ashland City River Port on the Cumberland River. (Google Maps)

“The river port, along with the existing Cheatham Rail line and four-lane roadway into Nashville, will give the best options to bring commerce in and out of Middle Tennessee,” said Kerry McCarver, county mayor. “Cheatham County could not ask for a better neighbor to bring investment and jobs our way. Thanks to TDOT for helping make this port a reality. It truly is a public-private partnership that will result in jobs and a tax base for the county.”

The goal is to create a $30 million multimodal inland port facility to handle various cargo types on a 40-acre site at Mile 162 on the Cumberland River. Ingram Marine Group is slated to pay for the construction with assistance from TDOT, which will direct $3 million in state funds earmarked for multimodal infrastructure to build the port’s pier.

“Strategic partnerships like this represent the kind of forward-thinking solutions essential to addressing Tennessee’s evolving infrastructure needs,” Eley said.

Photos showing the land around the Cumberland River upon which the river port will be built. (Town of Ashland City, Tenn., via Facebook)

The plan is for barges to move dry cargo, such as aluminum, cement, rebar and rubber. Construction is expected to start this summer, with the first phase including building a fixed dock and multicommodity warehouse.

“The Ashland City River Port will allow us to move a variety of dry goods more efficiently and effectively to better serve Tennessee businesses and residents. We are proud to open such a world-class facility in our home state and bring high-paying jobs to the Ashland City community,” said John Roberts, Ingram Marine CEO. “Saying how incredibly excited we are to launch this project would be an understatement.”

His company is a leading dry cargo and chemical inland river carrier. Ingram operates across some 4,500 miles of U.S. inland waterways to move agricultural and industrial commodities in 4,100 covered and open-top dry cargo and liquid tank barges as well as 140 towboats.

Welcoming Ingram Marine Group as a major player in the county industrial park, McCarver predicted the new multimodal facility’s “impact will reach far beyond the Cumberland River, stretching to the Nashville region.”

According to TDOT, the river port will greatly improve the state’s supply chain movements since it will be located within 10 miles of I-40 and I-65. Northwest of Nashville, Cheatham County is within a 20-minute drive from both Clarksville and Nashville. The county also has access to U.S. Route 70 and state routes 12, 41, 49, 155 and 249.

“Unlike congested waterways, there’s a low-density traffic pattern and potential for rail access to CSX via Nashville Western Railroad. In addition, barging is the most sustainable form of transportation as it causes less congestion, mitigates expensive transportation costs and reduces air pollution,” TDOT stated.

Ashland City Mayor Gerald Greer said, “The presence of Ingram will enhance our town’s reputation as a key player in the logistics and transportation industry. This recognition will open doors for future collaborations and investments, further solidifying our position as a hub of economic activity.”

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Oregon Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek has signed legislation aimed at addressing the state’s increasing problems with truckers bypassing weight scales, unauthorized household goods movers, and crashes in the medium-duty truck sector.

The bill is intended to expand enforcement to vehicles 10,001-26,000 pounds and will help align state statute with federal law under the interstate compact.

“One in four commercial vehicle accidents involve a medium-duty vehicle, and accident rates for these vehicles have risen 1.5 times relative to commercial vehicles over 26,000 pounds in recent years,” Carla Phelps, administrator of the Commerce and Compliance Division of the Oregon Department of Transportation, told the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation in April.

“As these vehicles continue to expand operations as a result of increased e-commerce activity, the higher probability of crashes continues to rise, while also imposing additional wear and tear on Oregon’s transportation infrastructure,” Phelps added. “As qualifications for CDL holders have become increasingly strict, making it more difficult for drivers who have failed a drug or alcohol test to clear their record through the federal clearinghouse, many of these drivers are hired by commercial carriers operating medium-duty vehicle fleets.”

The DOT does not require drug testing for non-CDL drivers.

The provisions included in the legislation, SB 839, also seek to address the state’s growing problem of vehicles illegally bypassing scales. “Data shows that many of these vehicles bypass for a reason, as the Commerce and Compliance Division finds that up to 50% of offenders have safety violations resulting in the driver or equipment being placed out of service,” Phelps said.

RELATED: Oregon, Vermont Halt Zero-Emission Truck Mandates

The penalty for illegal bypassing has been a Class B criminal misdemeanor, but prosecution has been declining due to limited judicial resources, leading to the dismissal of the citations without a hearing, conviction or assessed penalties, according to Phelps.

For that reason, the legislation modifies commercial vehicle statutes, including reducing the penalty for failure to comply with commercial vehicle enforcement requirements from a Class B misdemeanor to a Class A traffic violation related to the offense of operating a motor vehicle without driving privileges in violation of state law.

The legislation also requires that a person may not operate any motor vehicle, whether loaded or empty, on any highway in Oregon as a carrier in the transportation of persons or property without possessing, in addition to any license required by any other law, a valid certificate or permit from the Department of Transportation authorizing the proposed operation.

A person may not offer to transport, advertise as willing to transport or transport household goods for-hire in intrastate commerce without a valid certificate from the state DOT.

“The approximately 130 authorized Oregon-based movers of household goods compete with unauthorized movers on an uneven playing field,” Phelps said. “In cases for alleged violations identified outside compliance events, the department has failed to prevail due to the difficulty of obtaining proof of operation. CCD will be able to apply civil penalties on carriers that are advertising, yet not licensed as a household good carrier.

“Increasing the penalty to $3,000 will deter these activities and protect consumers from unlicensed movers.”

Not everyone was in favor of the legislation. Tyler Van Wormer, a deputy with the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, expressed some serious concerns.

“By reducing certain commercial trucking offenses from crimes to mere violations, this legislation risks undermining the enforcement tools necessary to deter and address reckless and unsafe commercial vehicle operations,” Van Wormer said. “These violations are not minor infractions; they pose an immediate and serious threat to public safety.”

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How to maximize the potential of a carrier’s rolling stock is one of the questions that keeps trucking executives up at night.

Penske Truck Leasing believes it has some of the answers with the latest upgrades to its Catalyst AI fleet management platform.

The many millions of fantasy sports league participants worldwide can tinker with their lineups throughout the season, with baseball league team owners especially prone to frantic activity when it comes to underperforming assets.

Juan Soto — the most expensive signing in baseball historyindeed in all sports, after a blockbuster crosstown New York switch in the offseason — was hitting .224 with just 8 home runs for the Mets through the first 55 games of the 2025 season. Soto’s carrier batting average is currently .281.

If Soto were a carrier asset or fleet operations variable, one of Catalyst AI’s upgrades — the Fantasy Fleet tool –– already would have been deployed to fix such a level of underperformance.

“You get a real-life example of what the best out there are doing,” says Haynes, vice president of digital and customer data. (Penske Truck Leasing)

Fantasy Fleet offers a comparison data set made up of the top-performing vehicles most similar to each vehicle in the user’s fleet, helping them find gaps and elevate performance, according to Penske.

The tool finds the best of the best out there, including assessing how the vehicles are being driven and operated, Tim Haynes, vice president of digital and customer data at Penske Truck Leasing, told Transport Topics.

“Now you get a real-life example of what the best out there are doing,” Haynes said in a recent interview, adding that Catalyst gives fleet managers the tools to change their roster for the better in the short and long term.

AI catalyst was launched in April 2024.

When it was launched, users could see what the fleet was doing, but with the latest enhancements, fleets can now drill down to the vehicle, hub or terminal level to assess the business, Haynes said.

“It is really giving you an ability to see how you’re performing against yourself,” he said.

Catalyst AI is embedded within Comparative Insights, a feature inside Penske’s Fleet Insight digital platform.

Three other key upgrades were introduced in the latest version of Catalyst — vehicle-level comparison, hub-level comparison and impacting metrics.

The last gives fleets the ability to focus on specific metrics that matter most to their business model, be that fuel efficiency, maintenance costs or utilization.

“The new release marks a next chapter for Catalyst AI — one that makes complex data more usable, more scalable and more actionable,” said Art Vallely, president of Penske Truck Leasing.

“We’ve enhanced the platform’s ability to surface trends, benchmark at the vehicle level, and identify meaningful outliers across fleets and facilities,” Vallely added. “Built in-house, the platform was designed to help our customers spend less time chasing data and more time improving performance.”

Some 70% of companies now report adopting AI solutions, up 17 percentage points from 2024, according to Penske’s 2025 Transportation Leaders Survey: A Road to AI Adoption study, which was released earlier in May.

Haynes, who is based at Penske headquarters in Reading, Pa., and has spent 26 years with the company, has analyzed data — and how it can help fleets — for much of his career.

“It’s not just about the algorithms; it’s about the data. The journey for capturing the data and making sure it is appropriate for use has been a long one,” he said. “It started with fleet managers asking how am I doing? How can I do better?”

The team building Catalyst includes data scientists, analysts and engineers, but also marketing, customer service and information technology employees at Penske, he said, noting that he himself spent many years on the marketing side of the business.

“Catalyst AI now analyzes over 100 billion data points annually,” said Haynes. “We’ve engineered a system that runs more than 300 models in real time — delivering comparison logic, trend detection and scoring that is both scalable and immediate. This release reflects the technical backbone required to help fleets benchmark smarter and respond faster.”

Part of the journey involved looking into what customers thought they wanted, finding out what they actually needed and then working on what they needed, the executive said.

“It’s giving you these levers that you need to keep your vehicles on the road,” he said, including, for instance, making sure maintenance is done at the right time. If maintenance needs to be carried out, Haynes added, Catalyst shows fleet managers when it needs to be done and how it needs to be done so that trucks stay on the roads.

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WASHINGTON — The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 29 allowed President Donald Trump to temporarily continue collecting tariffs under the emergency powers law while he appeals the federal trade court’s decision.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade had ruled May 28 that Trump overstepped his authority when he invoked the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to declare a national emergency and plaster tariffs on imports from almost every country in the world. USCIT has jurisdiction over civil cases involving trade. The legal challenge to Trump’s tariffs is widely expected to end up at the Supreme Court.

The ruling was a big setback for Trump, whose erratic trade policies have rocked financial markets, paralyzed businesses with uncertainty and raised fears of higher prices and slower economic growth.

But Trump’s trade wars are far from over.

The administration also has other ways to pursue the president’s goal of using tariffs to lure factories back to America, raise money for the Treasury and pressure other countries into bending to his will, if Trump’s appeal is ultimately unsuccessful.

Financial markets, which would welcome an end to Trump’s tariffs, had a muted response to the news as stocks rose modestly.

“Investors are not getting too carried away, presumably in the expectation that the White House will find a work-around that allows them to continue to pursue their trade agenda,’’ said Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at the financial services firm Ebury.

Trump’s IEEPA tariffs are being challenged in at least seven lawsuits. In the May 28 ruling, the trade court combined two of the cases — one brought by five small businesses and another by 12 U.S. states.

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The House Appropriations Committee will kick off its fiscal 2026 legislative season soon.

After its consideration of an appropriations bill scheduled for June 10 to back military and Veterans Affairs programs, House funding leaders intend to proceed with bills specific to other agencies.

The subcommittee debate on the fiscal 2026 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies measure is scheduled for July 14. Its full committee consideration is scheduled for July 17. The bill is meant to fund operations at the Department of Transportation.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-okla.)tasked with managing the panel’s schedule, applauded the Trump White House’s recent budget request for transportation programs. Earlier this month, the chairman told colleagues, “As we advance the fiscal year 2026 process, effective investments in our nation’s transportation systems are a priority. Secretary [Sean] Duffy’s team at DOT has already made great efforts to ensure we are directing taxpayer dollars to infrastructure and safety improvements that are worthwhile, taking a fine-toothed comb to thousands of funding decisions made by the previous administration.”

Cole continued: “This subcommittee will further these efforts as we look to the [fiscal 2026] bill, making sure we support programs that improve infrastructure while taking a hard look at those programs that are wasteful and duplicative.”

Most Democrats on Capitol Hill, however, continue to criticize much of President Donald Trump’s agenda. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)Appropriations Committee ranking member, expressed frustration about the White House’s budgetary strategy.

“We need the government to fight for the middle class, the working class and the vulnerable,” she said. “The government envisioned by President Trump only serves billionaires and the biggest corporations.”

The Senate Appropriations panel is expected to debate fiscal 2026 legislation before the August recess. Funding authority for most of the federal government expires Oct. 1.

In an admittedly “skinny” document, the White House asked Congress to approve nearly $27 billion for DOT’s discretionary budget in fiscal 2026. The White House, via its Office of Management and Budget, also proposed reductions to “costly technologies that burden ratepayers and consumers.” This included calling for the $6 billion cancellation of a nationwide electric vehicle charging station program.

The White House is asking for nearly $600 million to enhance supply chain connectivity at ports. It also is asking a prominent infrastructure grants program be increased by more than $700 million. Air traffic control operations under the Federal Aviation Administration’s jurisdiction would receive significant increases as part of the request.

“At this critical moment, we need a historic budget — one that ends the funding of our decline, puts Americans first, and delivers unprecedented support to our military and homeland security. The president’s budget does all of that,” Russ Vought, director of OMB, said earlier this month. His office has yet to announce when it will release a comprehensive — not “skinny” — fiscal 2026 budget request.

Appearing before House lawmakers May 14, Duffy explained, “We do not take additional funds from hardworking taxpayers for granted in an era where government has become too big, too inefficient and too wasteful. We have carefully planned for these dollars to fund urgent projects that once built, will serve future generations for decades.”

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The House Appropriations Committee will kick off its fiscal 2026 legislative season soon.

After its consideration of an appropriations bill scheduled for June 10 to back military and Veterans Affairs programs, House funding leaders intend to proceed with bills specific to other agencies.

The subcommittee debate on the fiscal 2026 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies measure is scheduled for July 14. Its full committee consideration is scheduled for July 17. The bill is meant to fund operations at the Department of Transportation.

Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-okla.)tasked with managing the panel’s schedule, applauded the Trump White House’s recent budget request for transportation programs. Earlier this month, the chairman told colleagues, “As we advance the fiscal year 2026 process, effective investments in our nation’s transportation systems are a priority. Secretary [Sean] Duffy’s team at DOT has already made great efforts to ensure we are directing taxpayer dollars to infrastructure and safety improvements that are worthwhile, taking a fine-toothed comb to thousands of funding decisions made by the previous administration.”

Cole continued: “This subcommittee will further these efforts as we look to the [fiscal 2026] bill, making sure we support programs that improve infrastructure while taking a hard look at those programs that are wasteful and duplicative.”

Most Democrats on Capitol Hill, however, continue to criticize much of President Donald Trump’s agenda. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)Appropriations Committee ranking member, expressed frustration about the White House’s budgetary strategy.

“We need the government to fight for the middle class, the working class and the vulnerable,” she said. “The government envisioned by President Trump only serves billionaires and the biggest corporations.”

The Senate Appropriations panel is expected to debate fiscal 2026 legislation before the August recess. Funding authority for most of the federal government expires Oct. 1.

In an admittedly “skinny” document, the White House asked Congress to approve nearly $27 billion for DOT’s discretionary budget in fiscal 2026. The White House, via its Office of Management and Budget, also proposed reductions to “costly technologies that burden ratepayers and consumers.” This included calling for the $6 billion cancellation of a nationwide electric vehicle charging station program.

The White House is asking for nearly $600 million to enhance supply chain connectivity at ports. It also is asking a prominent infrastructure grants program be increased by more than $700 million. Air traffic control operations under the Federal Aviation Administration’s jurisdiction would receive significant increases as part of the request.

“At this critical moment, we need a historic budget — one that ends the funding of our decline, puts Americans first, and delivers unprecedented support to our military and homeland security. The president’s budget does all of that,” Russ Vought, director of OMB, said earlier this month. His office has yet to announce when it will release a comprehensive — not “skinny” — fiscal 2026 budget request.

Appearing before House lawmakers May 14, Duffy explained, “We do not take additional funds from hardworking taxpayers for granted in an era where government has become too big, too inefficient and too wasteful. We have carefully planned for these dollars to fund urgent projects that once built, will serve future generations for decades.”

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Ford Motor Co.’s plan to make electric vehicle batteries at a new site in Michigan would be put at risk if Congress cuts federal incentives for clean energy, the company’s chair said.

The plant in Marshall, Mich. — and the 1,700 workers that Ford plans to employ there — would be “imperiled” if U.S. lawmakers move to eliminate tax credits that support battery producers as part of a broader tax plan moving through Congress, Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford said May 29 during remarks at the Mackinac Policy Conference at Michigan’s Mackinac Island.

“It’s not fair to change policy after all the expenditures have been made,” Ford said. “The production tax credit seems to be up for grabs.”

RELATED: Ford Recalls 1 Million Vehicles Over Rearview Camera Issue

After the event, Ford told reporters that “nothing needs to change” about the production tax credit because “we have built the business case on Marshall around that.”

President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill included several tax credits designed to help establish an EV supply chain and support consumer demand for plug-in cars.

Republican lawmakers are moving to unwind those policies. In addition to phasing out a $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicles, the House-passed bill would end a manufacturing credit for battery makers after 2031. It would also mandate strict restrictions against the use of Chinese components and materials that analysts say could effectively render it useless.

“Politicians can agree or disagree about whether those things are desirable,” Ford said. “But don’t change the rules once you’ve already made the investment because that to me is just a question of fairness. And that’s unfair.”

MORE: Ford Pauses Construction of Michigan Battery Plant

The legislative risks mark the latest potential hurdle for a plant Ford announced in 2023 that was originally intended to produce enough batteries for 400,000 EVs, part of an earlier ambitious plan to electrify its lineup. The automaker later reduced that target to power about 230,000 EVs as consumer demand for the technology faltered.

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The ceasefire in the tariff fight between the world’s two largest economies is encouraging trade across the Pacific, holding up freight prices three weeks on, even as container bookings have begun to slow.

Thanks to the reprieve, which began earlier this month, the price of shipping a 40-foot-equivalent unit from Shanghai to Los Angeles notched its biggest relative weekly gain this year, rising by nearly 17% to $3,738. The price per container in the week through May 29 was still almost a third below this year’s peak in January but above a late-March nadir of $2,487, just before President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement.

Bookings for containers have eased though. In the first three days of this week, bookings totaled about 106,000 20-foot-equivalent units, data from Vizion and Dun & Bradstreet show. That’s a drop from 137,000 TEUs in the same period the previous week, as the initial enthusiasm that followed the announcement of the truce began to ease. Globally, the week beginning May 19 marked the highest volume of bookings so far this year.

Data tracking shipping over the past two weeks, which tends to move at a lag to bookings, showed a similar softening. There were about 34 vessels departing Chinese ports for the U.S. over the past 15 days, according to a Bloomberg analysis of transponder data. That’s down from an average of 48 the previous week. The ships were also carrying one-third fewer containers.

The delay between booking and sailing means that current departures from China to the U.S. are frequently a reflection of the reality at the start of the month — in this case, when the US and China were still at loggerheads — prompting container liners to cancel or blank some services, meaning vessels sail empty.

“It’s a fluid situation. What we’re seeing is a constant rebalancing of the supply chain and between indicators like freight rates, bookings and sailings,” said Jayendu Krishna, a director at Drewry Maritime Services.

Other factors contributing to the drop include Chinese companies’ supply chains, which can allow them to ship products from other countries around the region, according to Bloomberg Intelligence shipping and logistics analyst Kenneth Loh.

Capacity, however, is beginning to recover. Major container liners have already promised to add more, while smaller forwarders are also returning to the route after years of absence as demand improves. Chinese operator China United Lines will start shipping across the Pacific to connect Chinese ports with Long Beach, while South Korea’s KMTC Line will resume a transpacific service after pulling out from it for decades.

Chinese trade overall is still at high levels, with the total number of containers processed at the country’s ports up 6% last week from the same period a year earlier, the 16th straight week of improvement.

And air cargo flights have also continued to rise, despite the U.S. ending the de minimis tariff exemption for small packages. Earlier this month, Trump reduced duties on items valued up to $800 to 54% from 120%.

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President Donald Trump said he expected to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping after accusing China of violating an agreement with the U.S. to ease tariffs, ratcheting up tensions between the world’s two largest economies. “They violated a big part of the agreement we made,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“But I’m sure that I’ll speak to President Xi, and hopefully we’ll work that out,” he added.

The president, who first levied the criticism on social media May 30, did not specify how China was not abiding by the agreement negotiated earlier this month in Switzerland. At the time, both countries said they would scale back tit-for-tat tariffs and continue trade talks.

Following a rally that put the S&P 500 on track for its best May since 1990, the gauge fell as much as 1.2% before paring losses.

pic.twitter.com/LqiQUG5PVt

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 30, 2025

The comments spelled fresh turmoil for the president’s trade agenda, which was shaken earlier this week by a federal court ruling that halted the bulk of his tariffs. An appeals court temporarily paused the decision to hear arguments, though it could ultimately back the initial decision and block Trump’s duties.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in an interview with CNBC suggested that China had been slow-walking their efforts, saying that the administration has “been very focused on monitoring Chinese compliance, or in this case, noncompliance, with the agreement.”

Greer suggested that one particular concern was critical minerals.

“We haven’t seen the flow of some of those critical minerals as they were supposed to be doing,” he said, later adding, “China continues to, you know, slow down and choke off things like critical minerals and rare Earth magnets.”

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said the U.S. and China have “maintained communication over their respective concerns in the economic and trade fields” since the talks in Geneva and cited the administration’s recent actions against Beijing.

“China has repeatedly raised concerns with the U.S. regarding its abuse of export control measures in the semiconductor sector and other related practices. China once again urges the U.S. to immediately correct its erroneous actions, cease discriminatory restrictions against China and jointly uphold the consensus reached at the high-level talks in Geneva,” the spokesman added.

China’s position on its rare earths restrictions were never publicly clarified following the Switzerland agreement, and the country’s exporters this month were still seeking clarity from Beijing on whether they’re allowed to sell to U.S. buyers. China’s curbs apply to all countries, meaning sellers would need to seek individual exemptions, a slower and more complex process than the White House and importers were expecting.

The agreement earlier this month buoyed investors who had been eager for Beijing and Washington to find an offramp from their tariff fight, which had roiled markets and threatened to spark a global slowdown. But since the deal, U.S. and China tensions have flared again.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller told CNN on May 30 that the U.S. had “a broad range of options to hold China accountable” and that future steps would be similar to the crackdown on student visas.

“I’m not going to detail for you right now the entire hand the president is willing to play,” Miller continued. “I will just put it this way, there are measures that have already been taken, there are measures that are being taken.”

Miller later told reporters that China needed to act “as soon as possible” to avoid additional action.

“China did not fulfill the obligations that it made and committed to with the United States, and so that opens up all manner of action for the United States,” he said.

Trump’s comments come a day after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that talks with China on trade were underway but had “stalled.” Bessent suggested that a call between Trump and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping might be necessary to break the deadlock.

“I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other,” Bessent said in a Fox News interview.

The last time the two presidents spoke was in January, before Trump’s inauguration. The U.S. president said he would speak to the Chinese leader “maybe at the end of the week” following the Geneva talks — which concluded in mid-May — but that call did not appear to take place.

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WASHINGTON — A key U.S. inflation gauge slowed last month as President Donald Trump’s tariffs have yet to noticeably push up prices, while American incomes jumped.

The May 30 report from the Commerce Department showed that consumer prices rose just 2.1% in April compared with a year earlier, down from 2.3% in March and the lowest since September. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 2.5% from a year earlier, below the March figure of 2.6%. Economists track core prices because they typically provide a better read on where inflation is headed.

The figures show inflation is still declining from its post-pandemic spike, which reached the highest level in four decades in July 2022. Economists and some business executives have warned that prices will likely head higher as Trump’s widespread tariffs take effect, though the timing and impact of those duties are now in doubt after they were struck down late May 28 in court.

The inflation-fighters at the most recent meeting May 6-7 that inflation is still elevated, compared to their target of 2%. Fed officials, who focus more on core prices, broadly support keeping their key interest rate steady while they evaluate the impact of the tariffs on inflation and jobs.

Good news on inflation. Year/year both overall and core PCE declined. pic.twitter.com/gNY7nfyVMp

— Kathy Jones (@KathyJones) May 30, 2025

The May 28 ruling said that most of Trump’s tariffs were unlawful, including his duties on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, as well as those on more than 50 other countries. Tariffs on steel, aluminum, and cars were implemented under different laws and remain in place.

But the duties were allowed to remain in effect while the Trump administration appeals the ruling against them. And administration officials say they will find other legal authorities, if needed, to implement the tariffs. As a result, what tariffs will end up in place and for how long remains highly uncertain.

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