Grocery price growth, once the scourge of the post-pandemic inflation surge, has finally settled down.

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that food-at-home prices increased 1.1% year-on-year — the ninth-straight month of sub-2% increases.

For the average consumer, the new price levels can take years to adjust to, economists say. Between January 2021 and December 2022, grocery prices shot up more than 20%.

As of July, consumers pay about $0.80 more for a gallon of milk (about $4 total), though dairy prices were already increasing before the pandemic hit. Likewise, a loaf of wheat bread is now $0.80 more to about $2.69 and a pound of ground beef is up $1.62 to $5.50.

One outlier is eggs. The cost of a dozen — though volatile thanks to avian flu — has doubled to more than $3.

Still, between January 2023 and July 2024, average grocery prices have only increased a cumulative 1.4%.

Consumer price growth in July slowed to its lowest post-pandemic level, a sign that the surging inflation that has gripped the U.S. economy is finally ebbing.

On a 12-month basis, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) cooled to 2.9%, down from 3% in June — the first time the index dipped beneath 3% since March 2021. Month over month, it rose 0.2% after falling 0.1% in June.

The latest reading adds to growing signs that the swift price increases consumers have suffered since the pandemic are abating, and it raises pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as soon as next month.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to propose the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries,” her campaign announced late Wednesday.

“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign said in a statement. “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”

The proposed ban is part of a broader economic policy platform that the Democratic presidential nominee plans to unveil Friday at a campaign rally in battleground North Carolina.

Harris will also pledge that if elected president, she will direct her administration to increase scrutiny of potential mergers between large supermarkets and food producers, “specifically for the risk that the proposed merger would raise grocery prices for consumers,” her campaign said.

This package of regulatory proposals is one of the Harris campaign’s earliest efforts to outline an economic platform that is independent of President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Before Biden abruptly dropped out of the race in July and endorsed Harris, he had spent more than a year campaigning for reelection and blaming corporate greed for consumer prices driven higher by inflation.

Harris’ plan still sits firmly within the overall Biden approach to regulation, however, which has prioritized consumer protections across a range of industries and sued to block several massive corporate mergers.

In March, the White House launched the Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing, a joint initiative between the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission.

On Friday, Harris will single out the meat industry, saying that “soaring meat prices have accounted for a large part of Americans’ higher grocery bills, even as meat processing companies registered record-breaking profits following the pandemic,” according to the statement from her campaign.

The Democratic presidential nominee will also unveil proposals intended to bring down consumer costs in two other sectors where corporations have aggressively exercised their pricing powers: prescription drugs and housing.

Harris’ speech will come two days after her opponent, former President Donald Trump, gave his own economic policy speech in North Carolina, where he blamed Harris for the high price of consumer goods.

“You’re paying the price for [Harris’] liberal extremism at the gas pump, at the grocery counter, and on your mortgage bill,” Trump said in Asheville.

Nearly a month into her campaign, Harris has already erased Trump’s lead over Biden in national and swing state polls.

But Trump still maintains his longstanding advantage over Democrats when it comes to which candidate voters believe would be best for the economy.

Walmart remains cautious about the financial health of its shoppers, but executives at the retail giant do not see a full-blown downturn on the horizon.

In an interview with CNBC, Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said that the company decided not to raise expectations for the second half of the year given uncertainties like the 2024 election and unrest in the Middle East that could up-end consumer sentiment.

But he said shoppers’ activity had been stable in the first six months of the year. The sentiment was echoed later Thursday as the Commerce Department reported that nationwide retail sales unexpectedly popped in July.

“In this environment, it’s responsible or prudent to be a little bit guarded with the outlook, but we’re not projecting a recession,” Rainey said, as the company released its latest quarterly results Thursday.

Whether the U.S. is headed toward a recession, usually defined as two-consecutive quarters of negative growth, has been a hot topic among economists and business leaders for months. A strong economic recovery from the pandemic has seen U.S. gross domestic product (the broadest measure of economic output) continue to rise. But efforts to bring inflation down with higher interest rates have led to some concern that the economy could see a period of contraction.

Part of the focus on whether a recession is on the way has been on U.S. consumers and whether they will continue to spend. Walmart said its latest quarterly revenue grew nearly 5% thanks to increasing visits to both physical stores and Walmart.com. Rainey said consumers continue to hunt for discounts, but that there had not yet been a significant downturn in their activity, with back-to-school season “off to a pretty good start.” 

“We see, among our members and customers, that they remain choiceful, discerning, value-seeking, focusing on things like essentials rather than discretionary items, but importantly, we don’t see any additional fraying of consumer health,” Rainey said.

A key driver of the stability: low inflation. While high prices remain a major focus on the campaign trail — with both presidential candidates talking up how they will take on the higher prices of everyday items — Rainey said price growth was flat for Walmart year over year.

Sales growth was thus driven by selling more units rather than higher prices: Rainey said Walmart has pushed vendors to reduce prices, and that the company saw 7,200 “rollbacks,” or short-term deals on items, in the quarter, including a 35% increase in the number of rollbacks on food.

Rainey said Walmart is likely benefitting as customers look for cheaper alternatives to fast food — a sector that has seen a downturn as consumers have pushed back on price increases. He referred to inflation data, which came out this week and showed grocery price growth has essentially flattened out.

“It stands to reason that customers are shifting to prepare more meals at home versus versus eating out,” he said.

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to ban marketers from using fake reviews, like those generated with AI technology, and other misleading practices to promote their products and services.

All five FTC commissioners voted to adopt the final rule, which will go into effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register, the government’s official catalog of rules and notices.

Typically, rules are published within days of their adoption, meaning that consumers can expect to see the FTC’s fake review ban go into effect starting in mid-October.

“Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money, but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement.

Along with prohibiting reviews written by non-humans, the FTC’s rule also forbids companies from paying for either positive or negative reviews to falsely boost or denigrate a product. It also forbids marketers from exaggerating their own influence by, for example, paying for bots to inflate their follower count.

Violations of the rule could result in fines being issued for each violation, according to the rule. This means that for an e-commerce site with hundreds of thousands of reviews, penalties for fake or manipulated ones could quickly add up.

With the rise of e-commerce, influencer marketing and generative AI, more advertisers are turning to automated chatbots like ChatGPT to quickly generate user reviews for products sold on online platforms.

The result: Consumers sometimes end up purchasing items based on false praise or misleading promises.

Fake reviews are already illegal, and some e-commerce companies have tried to push back on the deceptive marketing practice themselves.

Amazon, for example, sued over 10,000 Facebook group administrators in July 2022 for brokering fake reviews.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the FTC’s new rule from CNBC.

Under the FTC’s new rule, companies that might have policed themselves in the past will now be subject to stricter government oversight. 

Rather than prosecuting individual cases through the Department of Justice, this rule will streamline and strengthen the FTC’s ability to enforce the ban in house.

The announcement came the same day as the White House’s first “Creator Economy Conference,” during which Biden administration officials hosted 100 online influencers and digital content professionals to listen to concerns about the industry.

It appears to have taken a few weeks for current homeowners to realize mortgage rates had dropped dramatically. And when they did, they acted.

Applications to refinance a home loan surged 35% last week, compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. They were up a whopping 118% when compared with the same week one year ago.

This, even though the average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($766,550 or less) fell very slightly, to 6.54% from 6.55%, with points decreasing to 0.57 from 0.58 (including the origination fee) for loans with a 20% down payment.

While rates dropped just 1 basis point last week, they were down 33 basis points in the past four weeks. They were also 62 basis points lower than the same week a year ago.

“The refinance index also saw its strongest week since May 2022, driven by gains in conventional, FHA, and VA applications,” said Joel Kan, an MBA economist, in a release.

Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home rose just 3% for the week and were still 8% lower than the same week one year ago. Today’s homebuyers are dealing with a lot more than high interest rates. They are still up against high home prices and low supply. There is also a feeling among some buyers, according to agents, that mortgage rates may fall even lower, so they are waiting before making such a large purchase.

The refinance share of mortgage activity increased to 48.6% of total applications from 41.7% in the previous week. One year ago, refinance volume was just 29% of total applications.

Mortgage rates started this week essentially flat, but that could change with the release of the government’s monthly inflation report, the consumer price index.

“There’s no way to know ahead of time whether the data will be friendly or damaging–only that CPI is responsible for some of the biggest spikes and drops over the past few years,” wrote Matthew Graham, chief operating officer at Mortgage News Daily.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says he is optimistic about Boeing’s recovery after meeting with the manufacturer’s new chief executive.

It’s an upbeat change of tune from the head of United, a top Boeing customer that has been among the most publicly frustrated about the plane maker’s problems, which have led to delayed deliveries of dozens of aircraft.

Kirby and Boeing’s new CEO, Robert “Kelly” Ortberg, had lunch earlier this week in the Dallas area. Kirby said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday that he “was not only encouraged by what I heard, but I also came away with a renewed confidence that Boeing is on the right path and will recover faster than most expect.”

United has 484 unfilled orders with Boeing, according to the manufacturer’s website.

Ortberg also met with American Airlines CEO Robert Isom earlier this week, according to a person familiar with the matter who wasn’t authorized to speak with the media.

Read more CNBC airline news

Delta says chaos after CrowdStrike outage cost it $380 million in revenue

Boeing’s new outsider CEO takes the helm from the factory floor

NTSB 737 Max hearing puts Boeing’s troubled factories in the spotlight

Ortberg, who previously ran commercial and defense supplier Rockwell Collins and has more than three decades of experience in the aerospace industry, took the reins at Boeing a week ago, spending part of his first day at Boeing’s 737 factory floor in Renton, Washington. Ortberg will be based in Seattle, a shift from previous leaders.

“His engineering background at Rockwell Collins, combined with an instinct to be close to his frontline teams in Seattle, makes for a winning combination,” Kirby wrote on Thursday. “It was clear from our discussion that he’s 100% engaged, understands the cultural changes needed to turn things around and is committed to listening to his employees and customers.”

United and other major customers such as Southwest Airlines have been grappling with delayed jetliners as Boeing tries to recover from its latest safety crisis in the wake of a door plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 earlier this year.

No one was seriously injured in the accident — which occurred after bolts that hold the door plug in place weren’t installed before the airline received the plane — but it came after a host of other manufacturing defects on Boeing planes.

“In speaking with our customers and industry partners leading up to today, I can tell you that without exception, everyone wants us to succeed,” Ortberg said in a note to staff on his first day last Thursday. “In many cases, they NEED us to succeed.”