Euro-zone inflation is still in the pipeline

I nflation seems to have peaked in the United States : wage increases have stabilised, companies’ selling prices have risen considerably and companies have already passed on the rise in costs to their prices, as shown by the evolution of profit margins. But the situation is very different in the euro zone: wages have not yet reacted to the rise in prices and companies’ producer prices have not followed the rise in production costs: there is still a lot of inflation “in the pipeline” in the euro zone. This means that inflation will rise further in the euro zone, but not in the United States (unless of course there is another inflationary shock). Moreover, a comparison of import prices shows that they have risen much more in the euro zone than in the United States (due to movement in the exchange rate and low energy imports in the United States), which could lead inflation in the euro zone to peak 3 percentage points higher than in the United States, which would mean double-digit inflation in the euro zone.