You may have noticed while grocery shopping that bananas, generally one of the most price-stable items on the shelf, are no longer immune to rising costs.
Once dubbed “the fruit inflation forgot” for their long history of stable prices, bananas got even more expensive in September. Prices rose 0.4% last month, according to new consumer price index data released Friday.
That caps an unusually sharp 5.4% increase since April, when President Donald Trump imposed global tariffs that affected major producers in Central America. With virtually no U.S. production, the market is directly exposed to those tariffs.
Bananas aren’t the only thing that’s gotten more expensive, of course. The prices of everyday goods like clothing, household supplies and groceries have risen steadily since April, with the year-over-year inflation rate climbing from 2.9% to 3% in September, according to Friday’s CPI report.
But bananas stand out because they’ve “long been regarded as ‘inflation-proof,’ with prices remaining stable for decades,” says Brandon Parsons, a practitioner of economics at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School.
