Personal consumption expenditures price index inflation, one of the Federal Reserve‘s preferred gauges of price instability, has risen for the first time since September of last year, another damning contradiction of the White House’s assertion that President Joe Biden has tamed the worst inflationary crisis in 40 years.

Headline PCE inflation rose by 2.5% in the year ending in February, up from 2.4% in January. While 12-month core PCE inflation, which strips away the volatile categories of food and energy, slightly fell from 2.9% to 2.8%, the six-month annualized rate rose to 2.9% in February, up from 1.9% in December and 2.6% in January.

We already had a bevy of evidence that after significant progress bringing the inflation rate from its near-double-digit peak in 2022, the Fed’s war on inflation had not just stalled — it had clearly backslid. The February print for the consumer price index showed that CPI inflation was already back on the rise to an annual rate of 3.2%, and core CPI had stagnated at 3.8%. Meanwhile, wholesale prices, leading indicators of consumer inflation, blew past economist expectations, jumping from 1% annually in January to 1.6% in February, and core PPI came in even higher at 2%. Furthermore, in its March Summary of Economic Projections, the central bank itself upgraded median core PCE projection for 2024 from 2.4% to 2.6%.

In other words, in the 12 months ending in February, headline CPI, headline PPI, and headline PCE inflation all rose. Core CPI and core PPI held constant. Of all the Fed’s primary measures of price instability, just one, core PCE, actually fell on a 12-month basis, but as evidenced by the rapid acceleration of its 6-month annualized rate, the underlying fundamentals of core PCE are going in the wrong direction.

Half of the Fed’s main inflation measures are on the rise, two are stagnant, and just one is barely slowing. While the Fed may be pulling off the half of its soft landing that requires not plunging the economy into a recession, it is no longer winning the half against inflation. Can we really say that’s a “landing,” even if it’s a “soft” one, at all anymore?

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Meanwhile, the fiscal policy of the White House remains unapologetically inflationary. The president’s proposed budget for 2025 would be a third consecutive fiscal year of a $2 trillion deficit.

The Fed has undoubtedly made great progress thus far in fighting inflation, but at long last, it seems clear that even if it doesn’t need explicit help from the White House, it cannot be actively undermined by Biden’s budget boondoggles. The war on inflation, far from won, is worsening — not just for the Fed, but for the rest of us who have already paid in the form of prices up 18% since Biden took office and are clearly doomed to pay an even steeper bill to come.