Golf clubs and the war in Ukraine
I was reminded yesterday of a story I had heard about the aerospace industry which is suffering from much higher raw material prices, as is everyone else. Apparently titanium is not available for love nor money at the moment and the industry uses a lot of titanium.
So they looked at what other industries were competing in the market for the precious stuff and discovered it was golf club manufacturers. An industry that has to have a raw material out bid by an industry that doesn’t.
Oh well that is the free market for you, but it shows that it is not just oil and gas that are forcing up inflation. Fertiliser, food, metals and a dozen other raw materials are rising in price and that is feeding through the system.
In the UK consumer inflation is 10% but producer input prices are rising by 20.5% and factory gate prices by 16%.
That means there is a lot of consumer inflation coming down the line, things are going to get worse before they get better.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.