President Donald Trump is blaming his predecessor for Americans’ higher prices, arguing that inflation and rising costs are the legacy of President Joe Biden rather than his own administration. In Truth Social posts on Monday, Trump wrote that “price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, not by ‘TRUMP.’” He added that oil was higher under Biden and said that, apart from oil, “prices are coming down sharply.” Trump has made similar claims in recent months, pointing to falling food prices—particularly eggs—as evidence that his administration's economic policies are delivering lower costs. At a Republican midterm convention speech last week, he cited falling egg prices while arguing that prices for food and other goods were coming down.
The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show a more mixed picture. Consumer prices rose 3.4 percent in August from a year earlier, while prices for food purchased at home rose 2.2 percent. Gasoline, meanwhile, was up sharply from a year earlier as global oil prices surged to above $100 a barrel amid disruptions and uncertainty in global energy markets amid ongoing wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
And while inflation has cooled dramatically from its 2022 peak, consumers' perception of the economy has not necessarily improved along with it. The University of Michigan's preliminary September survey found consumer sentiment fell to 47.8, down from 51.7 in August and 13.2 percent below its level a year earlier. The reading was the second lowest in the survey's history if confirmed in the final report.
The deterioration was accompanied by a sharp increase in consumers' expectations for inflation. Americans now expect prices to rise 4.6 percent over the next year, up from 4 percent in August. The survey's director, Joanne Hsu, said the renewed rise in fuel prices and concerns about economic conditions were weighing on consumers.
The most important distinction in comparing prices under Biden and Trump is between the level of prices and the rate at which prices are rising. Inflation has slowed substantially from the highs reached during Biden's presidency, when it reached 9.1 percent in June 2022, the highest annual increase in consumer prices in more than four decades. The rate spiked due to a combination of massive pandemic-era government stimulus, global supply chain disruptions, and energy shocks but has since fallen dramatically.
The latest BLS data show consumer prices were up 3.4 percent in August from a year earlier. Food purchased for consumption at home was up 2.2 percent. That overall grocery number, however, masks large differences among individual products.
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