There are early signs that we are headed into inflationary times; today the US Post Office just announced that the cost of a first-class letter would go up to fifty-eight cents.

The decoupling of the US imports from China as a manufacturing source leads to higher costs; normally these costs are passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices. It will be interesting to see how Chinese manufacturers and US importers deal with these higher costs, and whether the Biden administration will continue with the Trump tariffs, or remove them because of inflationary considerations?

Just as an economic issue this would be complicated enough, but now that everything has become politicized, it becomes even more complicated and multi-faceted.