The CPI is also used for escalation in government ... not appropriate for contract situations in which the parties wish to make inflation-related price adjustments every month.

The process for calculating the CPI is regularly reviewed to make sure it is as robust and coherent as possible. This was done most recently by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in 2017.

Still, if the nowcasts for July hold, then the Fed’s concern that June’s CPI reading could just be a single encouraging datapoint may hold true. Wholesale prices can be a leading indicator of ...