I don't know if there is a Chinatown near you.
If there is, you will find many stores with products that are available at incredibly low prices.
If there is a $.99 store in your area, you will find many but not all of these very same Chinese made inexpensive products on the shelves.
This is by way of explaining how inexpensive the products are that have flooded American markets and are readily available at high markups with still low retail prices at Walmart, Target and a few other stores.
A pair of pliers in Chinatown can sell for a dollar and in an Ace hardware store for eight dollars. Still cheap for a well made piece of steel.
It is because of this vast importation of Chinese goods that the United States has had a real twenty-year deflation.
We don't see the deflation because domestic products such as home building, education, and healthcare have been rising at astounding rates. Combining the Chinese imports of very low cost goods and the domestic explosion of housing, education and healthcare prices we still end up with a low inflation rate.
Going to a Chinatown is the way to understand what is creating America’s modest inflation.
We have deflation that effects most ordinary Americans who shop at Walmart and inflation that effects social climbers who buy new houses and expensive higher education.