Fortune, Apr. 14, 2026

Most of Wall Street points to high oil prices as the driver of inflation. A maverick Johns Hopkins economist says they’re chasing the wrong culprit

Following the Commerce Department’s release on the morning of April 10 showing that March consumer prices rose at 3.3% year over year in March, this writer received well over a dozen emails from Wall Street analysts, market strategists, and economists making the same main point: It’s the jump in oil prices triggered by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz that’s primarily responsible for the “hot” consumer price index (CPI) reading. They posit that as long as the cost of gas at the pump and the sundry petroleum and petrochemical derivative products—from plastics to fertilizers—remain elevated, the trajectory will remain far above the Fed’s target tempo of 2%. These experts also invariably forecast a sharp downtrend in the inflation curve once the conflict ends.

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