Though I would never ascribe honourable motives to anyone in the US government, in this case, at least for now, the change might actually be a step in a direction that isn't crazy.

Current US inflation is unusually concentrated in just a few categories. Headline CPI (shopping basket) is up, but MCT (monetary) inflation is down. MCT can be thought of as the best estimate of the rate that's the same across all items, after removing the clearly product-specific factors.

The last MCT year-on-year inflation figure was only 2.29% for August, the lowest reading since November 2020. According to that data series, the multi-year inflation spike is completely over.

The current breakdown among the three big sectors of the calculation:
Housing experiencing very slight deflation, third month in a row
Services inflation rate falling at a year-on-year rate that has slowed four months in a row, causing a bit less than half the overall move
Goods inflation rate falling at a year-on-year rate that has slowed four months in a row, causing a bit more than half the overall move

I rather expect the MCT will pick up into next year, especially given the pick-up in divisia money running at +7.45%/year, but the world doesn't listen much to my expectations.

Jim