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One thing is clear at the start of the corporate earnings season: Inflation remains a hot topic for companies.

About two-thirds of companies in the S&P 500 that reported earnings in the first two weeks of the season (Oct. 10-21) had representatives mention inflation, according to a search of conference call transcripts by FactSet. Included among those companies are PepsiCo, Citigroup and Abbott Laboratories.

“The environment clearly is still very inflationary with a lot of supply chain challenges across the industry,” said PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta. The snack and beverage company beat analyst expectations for both revenue and earnings per share as its price hikes buoyed its bottom line, even as some units saw volume declines.

Recent economic data shows little sign of inflation letting up.

The consumer price index increased 0.4% in September, which was a hotter reading than the 0.3% expected by Dow Jones, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was at 0.6% without food and energy factored in, which was also above Dow Jones’ estimate of 0.4%.

The producer price index, which gauges wholesale prices, also rose 0.4% in September. That was similarly above the Dow Jones expectation of 0.2%.

Lingering inflation has led consumers to rethink expensive purchases as their spending power is squeezed and has also created higher costs for companies like Procter & Gamble. Last week the household goods maker of brands like Tide and Charmin posted quarterly results that narrowly outperformed analyst expectations.

“Raw- and packaging-material costs inclusive of commodities and supply inflation have remained high since we gave our initial outlook for the year in late July,” Chief Financial Officer Andre Schulten said during Wednesday’s conference call. “Based on current spot prices and latest contracts, we now estimate a $2.4 billion after-tax headwind in fiscal 2023.”

The company was among a handful of multinationals that said inflation abroad was chomping at international bottom lines as well as in the U.S. Citigroup and Pool, which distributes pool supplies, both said inflation in Europe hurt their businesses in the previous quarter.

Pool said total construction volume would likely be down in 2022 compared to 2021, though it beat expectations for the quarter.

Inflation is also making it harder for some companies to fill positions. Human resources company Robert Half said the workforce remains tight, while Snap-On said wages had to continue growing to get skilled workers. To be sure, Union Pacific said crew availability continued to improve and HCA Healthcare said it could lean less on contract workers to fill voids.

This year’s inflationary pressure have led to multiple rate increases from the Federal Reserve. It is expected to keep hiking until the end of 2022, at least.

On the fiscal side, the government passed the Inflation Reduction Act earlier this year.

Multiple companies said the Inflation Reduction Act would likely help their outlook, with those who emphasize green energy poised to benefit from the legislation’s tax credits for alternative energy forms.

Electric vehicle maker Tesla said it was too early to predict specific impacts on demand, but they did expect to benefit from the legislation’s benefits for consumers who migrate away from gas-powered cars. The company beat earnings per share expectations for the third quarter but revenue came in lower than analysts anticipated.

Predictions about how long these pressures will last varies with the executives being asked for their opinion.

“Inflation continues to be a stubborn force globally, though we’ve started to see some moderating impacts in certain areas of our businesses compared to earlier in the year,” Abbott CEO Robert Ford said Oct. 19. The science company beat expectations for the quarter with per-share earnings nearly 23% higher than expected.

Manufacturing company Dover also said inflation has come down compared to the past year and a half, specifically pointing to the company’s decreasing costs related to logistics and raw material. That view is in line with that of some economics experts, who said “soft” inflation gauges are falling faster than the main indicators the Fed favors like the consumer price index which can lag.

“Clearly, we have some caution in terms of what’s going to develop in the marketplace,” said Dover CEO Richard Tobin on Oct. 20. “I fundamentally disagree with what the Fed is doing now.”

Others weren’t as upbeat, though. Whirlpool and Tractor Supply Company both said inflation should persist at the current level for the first half of 2023 before cooling. Tractor Supply beat per-share earnings but missed on sales, while Whirlpool came in below expectations for per-share earnings by about 16%.

“Inflation remains persistent and elevated, and we anticipate this to continue well into 2023 with some moderation in the back half of 2023,” Tractor Supply CEO Harry Lawton said.

The U.S. budget deficit was sliced in half for fiscal 2022, the biggest drop in history following two years of huge Covid-related spending.

Though still large in historical terms, the budget shortfall declined to $1.375 trillion, compared to the 2021 deficit of $2.776 trillion.

The decline would have been steeper had it not been for the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program. Education spending totaled $639.4 billion for the fiscal year, $408 billion higher than estimated.

The 2022 fiscal year saw $4.896 trillion in revenue against $6.272 trillion in outlays. The outlays number represented about a $550 billion decline in spending but an $850 billion increase in revenue. The revenue total is by far the highest ever for the U.S. government.

Deficits in the previous two years soared as Congress shelled out massive sums to combat the pandemic.

The shortfall hit a record $3.13 trillion in 2020 due to more than $5 trillion in CARES Act spending and other outlays. In 2019, the deficit was $983.6 billion. Prior to 2020, the highest deficit ever was $1.41 trillion in 2009 as the financial crisis came to a close. The U.S. briefly ran a surplus from 1998 to 2001.

In fiscal 2021, legislators passed the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion spending package that the White House said helped get the nation through a severe health and economic crisis, but which critics say was unnecessary and helped fuel the highest inflation rate in more than 40 years.

President Joe Biden, however, placed the deficit blame on Republicans for approving the 2017 tax cut bill.

“The federal deficit went up every single year in the Trump administration — every single year he was president,” he said. “It went up before the pandemic. It went up during the pandemic. It went up every single year on his watch, Republican’s watch.”

Biden called the GOP fiscal approach “mega-MAGA trickle down” that he defined as “the kind of policies that have failed the country before and it’ll fail it again.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the budget statement released Friday “provides further evidence of our historic economic recovery, driven by our vaccination effort and the American Rescue Plan.”

Yellen added that the results also showed Biden’s “commitment to strengthening our nation’s fiscal health.”

Earlier this year, the White House pushed through the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at a variety of areas including reducing medical costs, boosting clean energy and reforming the tax code. However, inflation has continued to climb, and administration officials have stressed that the Federal Reserve’s primary role in fighting price increases is through interest rate hikes.

—CNBC’s Emma Kinery contributed reporting.

Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk thinks the global economic decline could last for another year and a half.

In a Twitter exchange early Friday morning Eastern time, the mercurial electric car executive and world’s richest man said a recession could continue “until spring of ’24.”

The remarks came in response to a tweet from Shibetoshi Nakamoto, the online name for Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus, who noted that current coronavirus numbers “are actually pretty low. i [sic] guess all we have to worry about now is the impending global recession and nuclear apocalypse.”

“It sure would be nice to have one year without a horrible global event,” Musk replied.

Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, a Twitter account with nearly 600,000 followers, then asked Musk how long he thought the recession would last, to which he replied, “Just guessing, but probably until spring of ’24.”

Global GDP grew 6% in 2021 but is expected to decelerate to 3.2% this year and 2.7% in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund. That would mark the weakest pace of growth since 2001 outside of the financial crisis in 2008 and the brief plunge in the early days of the Covid pandemic. The Federal Reserve projects GDP in the U.S. to grow just 0.2% this year and 1.2% in 2023.

Musk becomes the latest corporate titan to express reservations about the economy.

In a tweet Wednesday, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said it’s time to “batten down the hatches” in preparation for rough economic waters ahead. That tweet accompanied a video of Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who said in a CNBC interview that he thinks there’s a “good chance” of a recession in the U.S.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon also has been warning of economic turmoil ahead.

Musk’s comment also came amid a rough week for Tesla stock as the automaker missed revenue estimates and cautioned about a potential delivery shortfall this year.

During the analyst call, Musk expressed more confidence in the U.S. economy than other parts of the world. He also noted the impact that interest rate increases are having on the economy.

“The U.S. actually is in — North America’s in pretty good health,” he said. “A little bit of that is raising interest rates more than they should, but I think they’ll eventually realize that and bring back down, I think.”

However, he said China is in “quite a burst of a recession of sorts” driven by the real estate market, while Europe “has a recession of sorts, driven by energy.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated past GDP growth.