SOTS 2nd Hour: CPI Breakdown, LIVE: Stephen Miran, & AMC Entertainment CEO Talks Box Office 8/12/25

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Sara Eisen (0:53)

Good Tuesday morning, welcome back to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber, live as always from Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks are mostly higher, following another inline inflation report. Some would say tamer than expected. S&P's up 2 tenths of 1%.

We're on record high watch again. NASDAQ just barely positive right now, because you are seeing some strength in other sectors, like consumer stocks, for instance, which are having a good day. The Dow is up 229 points after mostly a positive finish yesterday. Take a look at Treasury's very much in focus. Some curve's steepening today. Higher on the back end, but the 2-year rallies, and we're seeing lower rates there at 3.7, as September looks like a lock for a rate cut. That's the rate from the market following that inflation report. It's just information technology, real estate and consumer discretionary that are weaker right now. Energy and financials leading the charge higher. Coming up in just a moment, Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran will join us. First on CNBC, it's an interview to talk about today's CPI print, about being chosen as President Trump's pick for Fed Governor. And a rare interview with the CEO of AMC, one of the original meme stocks, with an update on quarterly results and the summer box office.

Carl Quintanilla (2:06)

We begin with some breaking news out of the Fed. The Richmond Fed President Tom Barker talking in Chicago, making some headlines saying he is neutral on the rate cut outlook. He sees pressure on inflation and employment, both sides of the mandate, and says the balance of risks between inflation and unemployment is still unclear, and that the Fed is well positioned to adjust policy as the data becomes more clear. We'll keep our eye on further headlines. And a pretty busy week for macro data, that's for sure.

Sara Eisen (2:31)

Mark is feeling confident about this September cut, though it sounds like some Fed members still want more evidence. The broader markets are rallying as July CPI year-over-year print came in a tenth light. Meantime, President Trump last night announcing his pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal agency behind today's data, BLS critic and former Heritage Foundation economist EJ. Antony, writing that he'll ensure the numbers released are, quote, honest and accurate. Joining us now to discuss all of this is White House Council of Economic Advisers chair and President Trump's new pick to replace Fed Governor Kugler, Stephen Miran. It's good to have you, Chair Miran. First, you must be pleased to see another inflation number that comes in a bit light and does not show a lot of evidence of tariff pass through.

Stephen Miran (3:19)

Good morning and thanks for having me. And yes, I can tell you that we're very happy to see that inflation continues to be well behaved. Since the president took office in February, inflation has been running, CPI inflation has been running at a 1.9% annualized rate, which is a totally normal pattern of behavior for inflation and for prices. And as you pointed out, you know, look, there's just still continues to be no evidence whatsoever of any tariff-induced inflation. I think lots of folks who are expecting that, who are predicting doom and gloom, it just hasn't panned out and it continues to not pan out for them.

Sara Eisen (3:49)

There's a little evidence. I saw it in coffee, I saw it in tomatoes, you see it in photography equipment, that sort of thing. But to your point, it's not filtering through into the headline numbers. And even the goods prices looked better in July than they did in June. I guess the question, Chair Miran, is, is it coming? Because a lot of the economists still say, all right, well, you know, these companies are still working off of their inventories, they had months of inventories, they can't absorb it indefinitely.

Stephen Miran (4:15)

Well, look, there will always be relative price changes, there will always be one good or service gets more expensive and another one gets cheaper, that will always happen. But at the aggregate level, when you look holistically across the inflation data, there's just no evidence of it whatsoever. And that's an exact repeat of what happened in 2018-2019, when again, the same doomsayers, the same Cassandras were saying exactly the same thing and it didn't pan out for them then. Thus far, it's not panning out for them again. Could it happen in the future? As I've said before, never rule out anything, but thus far, there's no evidence of it. And the entire burden of argumentation is on the people who have been waiting since January 20th, the tariffs began, right? It's been a gradual process of different tariff regimes, but we started putting tariffs on various countries on January 20th and still hasn't panned out.