Oil just broke $100 a barrel. Diesel has surged past $6 a gallon in parts of the country. Yet last week the Federal Reserve responded to the pain American families are feeling at the pump by raising interest rates for the first time since 2023 by a quarter of a percentage point.

There’s just one problem: the Fed didn’t cause this inflation, and higher interest rates won’t fix it. This isn’t America’s post-COVID inflation, topping out at over 9% in 2022, after the Fed’s rates were close to zero for two years.

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