Question

Why is gasoline weighted more heavily than tomatoes in a calculation of the annual inflation rate in the United States?

Gasoline costs more to produce and purchase than tomatoes.
Gasoline is imported from other nations at a higher rate than tomatoes.
Americans purchase many more boxes of tomatoes than barrels of gasoline.
Americans spend more money on gasoline than tomatoes, on average.

Answer 1

Americans spend more money on gasoline than tomatoes, on average.

The CPI weights items by consumers' expenditure shares (from the Consumer Expenditure Survey), not by production cost, import share, or unit counts. Since households devote a larger share of their spending to gasoline than to tomatoes, gasoline receives a heavier weight in the inflation calculation.