The May Print Lands: Testing the Hormuz Lag Predictions Against the Data
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the May 2026 Consumer Price Index this morning. Headline inflation came in at 4.2% year-over-year — the third consecutive monthly acceleration and the highest reading since April 2023. Core inflation was only 2.9%. Gasoline rose 40.5% year-over-year against a 28.4% reading the prior month. Fuel oil rose 58.9%. Food inflation jumped from 2.3% to 3.1% in a single month. Article 26 of this catalog, published June 8, made specific time-bounded predictions about how the Hormuz supply shock would propagate to U.S. consumer prices on calendar-time mechanics. The May print is the first major data point that directly tests those predictions. This essay engages the data honestly against what the framework forecast — what is tracking, what is moving slower than predicted, what is moving faster, and what the divergence between the 4.2% headline and the 2.9% core tells us about where we are in the propagation timeline.