The average US price of regular petrol this Christmas was almost US20¢ a gallon lower than it was a year earlier. Prices at the pump are still higher than they were during the pandemic slump, when economic shutdowns depressed world oil prices, but the affordability of fuel – as measured by the ratio of the average wage to petrol prices – is most of the way back to pre-COVID-19 levels.

Now, petrol prices aren’t a good measure either of economic health or of successful economic policy – although if you listened to Republican ads during the midterms, you might have thought otherwise. But subsiding prices at the pump are only one of many indicators that the inflationary storm of 2021 to 2022 is letting up. Remember the supply chain crisis, with shipping rates soaring to many times their normal level? It’s over.