Fox News host Maria Bartiromo speaks with financial analyst Joel Shulman, March 18, 2026. (Image: Screengrab via X)
The hosts and commentators on Fox News were unable to spin good news out of the disastrous report about recent inflation, with one guest stating bluntly, "Yeah, this is not good."
Per a report from The New Republic, host Maria Bartiromo led a Fox Business segment on Wednesday morning's Bureau of Labor Statistics report on the producer price index, or PPI, for February, which measures the average change over time in selling prices received by American producers. In February, the PPI inflation rate reached 3.4 percent year-over-year, representing the biggest jump in years.
Reporting on these new statistics, Fox's on-air talent did not have much leverage to spin them in a positive light.
"These numbers are much hotter than expected, guys," reporter Sheryl Casone told Bartiromo.
As Casone broke down, PPI was 0.7 percent month-over-month, up from initial estimates of 0.5 percent, and over double the 0.3 percent hoped for by Wall Street. The year-over-year number was also half a point higher than estimates predicted. Stock market statistics that the network showed in the wake of the report's release were all negative, which one of their guest's predicted would be a continuing trend over the next few days.
"Yeah, this is not good,” Joel Shulman, a financial analyst and founder of asset management company, ERShares, told Bartiromo. "We're gonna see the markets off today. ... This is gonna be negative for the markets, and we're gonna see the markets ticking down even further in the next couple days. So this is not good news."
Despite negative reports like this one, Trump has repeatedly claimed in recent months that the U.S. economy under his leadership is flourishing, and that inflation specifically had been "defeated." As The New Republic highlighted, the reaction to the PPI report was even more blunt on CNBC.
"It’s almost the worst of both worlds," contributor Rick Santelli said. "I guess stagflation would come close to describing the situation."
Stagflation refers to a particularly weak economic state characterized by high inflation, as well as stagnant overall growth and job creation, all of which could sum up the current state of Trump's economy. Last week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revealed that the U.S. GDP grew by a slow 0.7 percent between October and December, down from initial reports of 1.4 percent. A jobs report from last month also showed that, between May 2025 and February, the country lost around 19,000 jobs overall, while unemployment reached 4.4 percent. Trump's allies attempted to spin these numbers as a good thing, claiming that lower numbers were the result of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.