UJ
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During his campaign, President Donald Trump consistently promised to lower prices “starting on Day One” if he were elected. A month has elapsed since he took office, yet those promises remain unfulfilled.
Consumer prices increased by 0.5% last month compared to December, marking the swiftest monthly rise since August 2023, based on Consumer Price Index statistics. This trend could worsen, as wholesale prices continue to stay high, typically foreshadowing increased consumer prices.
The most immediate impact is felt at grocery stores, where customers face skyrocketing egg prices—if they’re fortunate enough to find eggs at all—due to widespread avian flu outbreaks. Furthermore, despite Trump’s commitment to increase oil drilling to lower gas prices, Americans are currently paying an average of four cents more per gallon of regular fuel than they were when he took office on January 20, according to AAA.
Unsurprisingly, Americans are dissatisfied. A recent UJ poll indicates that 62% of respondents believe Trump has not taken adequate measures to address inflation. Almost the same proportion view inflation as “a very big problem,” according to a Pew Research survey released on Thursday.
It may have been unrealistic to anticipate an immediate decline in prices upon Trump’s return to the Oval Office. In fact, a sudden drop would have raised significant concerns about underlying economic issues.
However, as Vice President JD Vance remarked in a CBS News interview last month, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“Consumers will eventually see lower prices at the pump and in grocery stores, but it will require some time,” he stated. Translation: My boss was mistaken earlier.
He has a valid point—unless there are unexpected events like a global pandemic, economies typically do not shift course overnight. Indeed, if prices had decreased as rapidly as Trump claimed, it could signify that the economy was grappling with more severe problems.
Another strategy Trump and his administration are using when faced with questions about rising prices is the classic political tactic of blaming the previous administration.
“BIDEN INFLATION UP!” Trump declared on Truth Social following the release of January’s inflation data.
“If Joe Biden had simply maintained federal spending at the levels we had in 2019, we would virtually have no inflation right now,” Trump stated during the FII Priority Summit in Miami on Wednesday.
However, there’s no need for alarm: “We’re tackling inflation,” asserted Trump’s chief economist, Kevin Hassett, who leads the National Economic Council, during a White House briefing on Thursday.
“And how are we doing this? Well, we have a plan that President Trump and I, along with others, have discussed in the Oval Office that covers all levels for combating inflation.”
This plan—or as Trump prefers to call it, the concept of a plan—involves reducing government spending and implementing “supply-side measures,” Hassett explained. “We will continue to see some remnants of Biden’s inflation; it won’t disappear overnight,” he cautioned.
Trump has proposed a strategy to alleviate inflation, which includes a mix of tax cuts, increasing energy drilling permits, and perhaps distributing DOGE to reduce spending (and possibly channeling some of this directly to taxpayers). However, cutting taxes could exacerbate America’s debt challenges and drive up borrowing costs, energy firms are hesitant to expand drilling while demand is low, and issuing stimulus checks could destabilize the economy and reignite inflation.
Press secretary Kush Desai defended Trump’s claim of immediate price reductions, stating to UJ that “within hours of taking office, President Trump took decisive executive actions to provide economic relief for everyday Americans by unleashing domestic energy, eliminating burdensome regulations, and capping excessive government expenditures.”
Generally, most economists would concur: One month is not a sufficient timeframe to assess the health of a nation’s economy. Instead, they prefer analyzing multiple months of data to filter out one-off fluctuations and identify enduring trends.
Likewise, it would be prudent to wait several months before evaluating the impact of Trump’s policies on inflation. After all, it took more than two years for inflation to decrease from a four-decade peak of just over 9% in 2022 to a level now just below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.
However, Trump forfeited that leniency the moment he promised immediate relief—which Americans have yet to witness.
