How does the US inflation "soft landing" exceeding expectations and the shrinking tariff benefits affect the crypto market?

【Blockchain Rhythm】 The latest news comes as a bit of a surprise—US January CPI data has been released, with an actual reading of 2.7%, directly contradicting Wall Street’s previous consensus forecast of 3.1%. From this figure, it’s clear that inflationary pressures are indeed easing significantly.

What’s a bit painful about this result is that the market had widely bet that tariffs would significantly push up prices. Starting from spring last year, policy measures kept intensifying, and people expected a new wave of inflation. However, two recent studies from the San Francisco Fed have reversed this expectation—historical data shows that although tariffs sound intimidating, their actual transmission to inflation isn’t as strong as imagined. The reason is quite practical: importers have diluted the effective tariff rate through capacity shifting, guerrilla tactics, negotiating exemptions, and other means. This means tariffs have a more noticeable impact on GDP and employment, but their shock to prices is less than expected.

Looking at specific numbers, tariff revenues are still shrinking. According to Pantheon Macroeconomics, the peak was $34.2 billion in October, then it started to decline—$32.9 billion in November, and further easing to $30.2 billion in December. This month-by-month downward trend is worth paying attention to.

Currently, the average effective US tariff rate is about 12%. Estimates suggest this adds roughly 0.9 percentage points to (PCE) inflation driven by personal consumption expenditures. However, about 0.4 percentage points of this has already been absorbed by the market, meaning the main impact has already passed. This increases the likelihood that core PCE will approach the 2% target within the year.

Another more realistic issue is that the Treasury Secretary previously claimed that tariffs could generate between $500 billion and nearly $1 trillion in revenue, but independent estimates now suggest that by 2025, collections will only reach $261 billion to $288 billion. This gap is quite significant. Currently, the US fiscal year 2026 deficit has already accumulated to $439 billion, and the total national debt has surpassed $38.5 trillion. Against the backdrop of tariff revenues falling short of expectations, the newly proposed large-scale spending plans raise questions about fiscal sustainability. For the crypto market, this evolution warrants ongoing observation—shrinking policy space and potentially increased flexibility for the Federal Reserve could generally be positive for risk assets.