Core commodities (goods less food and energy) carry about 19 percent of the CPI-U basket. Core services less energy services carry about 61 percent. Shelter alone carries about 36 percent. The June CPI print at 8:30 ET Wednesday July 15 reads the tariff pass-through through the smallest of the three.

The three-slice split

The BLS relative importance tables set the weights each January using the prior year’s consumer expenditure survey. The Dec 2024 CPI-U reference table, in effect for CPI reports through Dec 2025, put food at about 13.5 percent, energy at about 6.3 percent, core commodities at about 19 percent, and core services at about 61 percent. The Dec 2025 update, in effect for the June 2026 print, shifts these weights by tenths of a point, not by whole numbers.

Inside core commodities, the four largest items are used cars and trucks (about 2 percent of headline CPI), new vehicles (about 3.5 percent), apparel (about 2.5 percent), and household furnishings and supplies (about 4 percent). The rest is medical care commodities, recreation commodities, education and communication commodities, alcohol, and tobacco. No single item inside core goods carries more than 4 percent of the headline basket.

Inside core services, shelter is the whole story. Rent of primary residence and owners’ equivalent rent together carry about 33 percent of headline CPI. Medical care services carry about 6.5 percent. Transportation services carry about 6 percent. Everything else (recreation, education, communication, personal care services) fits in the remaining 15 percent of the basket.

Why the pass-through slice is smaller than the trade slice

Imports are roughly 14 to 15 percent of US GDP. Inside the CPI basket, the import share is concentrated in core goods (apparel, electronics, furnishings, autos, tools) and food. Services are almost entirely domestic. Shelter is entirely domestic. Energy prices respond to global oil markets but the pass-through channel is the crude price, not a tariff schedule.

The consequence: a tariff schedule that raises the landed cost of imports feeds directly into the 19 percent core goods slice and into a portion of the 13.5 percent food slice. The 61 percent core services slice is insulated from a direct pass-through. Second-round effects (higher input costs for domestic services, wage pressure from consumer price pressure) run through core services on a lag measured in quarters, not months.

A tariff pass-through that fully translates statutory rate hikes to CPI-U levels moves core goods by the effective import share of core goods (about 30 to 35 percent of the slice) times the average statutory rate increase. A 5 percentage point rise in the effective duty on imported core goods, fully passed through, adds roughly 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points to headline CPI over the pass-through window. That window historically runs 3 to 9 months from the tariff implementation date to full price-basket saturation.

What June CPI reads

The June 2026 CPI print is the first read on the tariff pass-through from the April 2026 rate schedule shift, which raised the effective duty on May imports. May inventories that predated the April schedule are exhausting through June retail shelves. The June basket reads the first month with meaningful post-schedule inventory saturation on core goods.

The market consensus band on June core CPI sits at plus 0.24 to plus 0.30 percent month-over-month. The May core print landed at plus 0.26 percent on the June 11 release. A June core print above the band pulls attention to the core goods sub-index, not the aggregate. A print inside the band with core goods softer than expected signals inventory pipelines are absorbing the pass-through inside margins. A print inside the band with core goods hotter than expected signals full pass-through with offsetting softness in core services, likely shelter.

The three sub-index reads that matter are core goods month-over-month (the direct pass-through channel), rent of shelter month-over-month (the largest offset), and services less shelter month-over-month (the supercore read the Fed’s projection materials weight most heavily). The aggregate print is the sum. The composition is the signal.

Sources: BLS Consumer Price Index relative importance of components, www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/. BLS CPI-U news release schedule, www.bls.gov/schedule/news_release/cpi.htm. US Census Bureau Foreign Trade Statistics for import share of GDP, www.census.gov/foreign-trade/.