inflation

Conservative warns of GOP 'shellacking' in midterms over Trump’s inflation lies

National Review senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty says there are people in the White House crafting “a solid, fact-based message” on rising inflation concerns. But President Donald Trump isn’t one of them.

“When Trump talks about the economy, he prefers to insist that the problems are already solved,” said Geraghty, citing Trump boasting of a “golden age of America” at a November summit and claiming to have “stopped inflation in its tracks” in the nine months since he took office.

But this is not the reality for many Americans, said Geraghty, adding that in November, Americans “metaphorically grabbed candidates by the lapels and shook them, screaming that the cost of living was still too high, and they felt squeezed in every direction, month after month.”

“So, no, this is not a great time for the president to contend that gas prices are close to two dollars a gallon, or that we’re living in a golden age, or that ‘affordability’ is some new word, or that inflation has been stopped in its tracks, or that ‘prices are coming down and all of that stuff,’” Geraghty said. “It’s been a long time since President Trump pumped his own gas or shopped for his own groceries, if he ever has.”

Geraghty admitted that there are Americans out there “who voted for Donald Trump because they really wanted to see Jim Comey and Tish James punished,” as well as Trump voters who want to see the Pentagon investigate and punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) for advising members of the military to ignore unlawful orders.

“But the number of Americans with those attitudes is dwarfed by the number of Americans who voted for Trump because they thought he would make the cost of living more manageable,” said Garaghty.

According to 2024 exit polls, 22 percent of Americans said inflation had caused their family ‘severe hardship.’ This group split in favor of Trump, 76 percent to 23 percent, said Garaghty. Fifty-three percent said inflation had caused their family “moderate hardship,” and this group split in favor of Trump, 52 percent to 46 percent. Only 24 percent of respondents said inflation had caused their family no hardship, and this group split in favor of Kamala Harris, 78 percent to 21 percent.

“If the Republicans head into the midterm elections with a president who keeps insisting the economy is doing terrific and the cost of living is manageable, when the American public strongly disagrees, the GOP is going to get absolutely shellacked,” Geraghty said

Read the National Review report at this link.

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'Never been this bad': Small businesses 'infuriated' at Trump’s damage to the economy

CNN analyst Matt Egan said mom-and-pop stores are reeling from surging import costs, rising inflation and a stressed-out workforce.

Enten reports Doug Scheffel, owner of a family-run ETM Manufacturing in Massachusetts, “laid off about a quarter of his employees in April as the Trump administration’s haphazard tariff rollout dented demand for the machine parts and sheet metal” his company sells.

“Everyone is hunkering down and building up cash. It’s never been this bad,” Scheffel told CNN. “It’s very uncertain and impossible to plan in this environment.”

Egan said small businesses comprise the vast majority of total businesses in the nation, as well as nearly half of all employees and most job growth. But the average rate on a new urban small business term loan is now well north of 10 percent, up from 7 percent at the end of last year, which Scheffel called “infuriating.”

Additionally, Scheffel said high prices at the grocery store and elsewhere are distracting employees.

“They’re worried about putting food on the table and buying shoes for their kid,” Scheffel said. “Bad stuff happens when they’re not totally focused.”

Other business owners are livid at the cost increase for providing employees health insurance, with CNN reporting the average cost of single coverage health insurance surging by 120 percent for companies with fewer than 50 employees.

“It’s unbelievable how much healthcare has gone up,” said Bryan Pate, CEO of San Diego-based PT Motion Works. “It’s an unfair barrier to hiring.”

And all that combines with pressure from President Donald Trump’s historic tariff hikes,” with Pate telling CNN that, “we just don’t know what the guy is gonna do. It creates so much anxiety and time-wasting.”

They’ve even managed to cost Americans jobs, with Pate having to end contracts with seven San Diego assembly workers and move that work to Mexico to cut costs. And he’ll still have to raise prices on his products to offset Trump’s 20 percent levy on imports from Taiwan.

“China, Mexico and Canada don’t pay [the tariffs]. I’m the one that’s paying for it,” said Troy Rackley, CEO at Florida-based The Next Level of Performance. “I pay taxes on my income, and now I have to pay additional taxes on what I bring in.”

On top of al that, Khari Parker, co-founder of Connie’s Chicken and Waffles in Baltimore, says Trump’s crackdown on immigration is shrinking his company’s labor pool. CNN reports the U.S. construction industry is also feeling the pain.

“A lot of the workforce is nervous from all the stuff going on with immigration,” said Antonio McMillion, president of Maryland-based developer MFP Management & Construction, which has been forced to hire more expensive workers, raising their labor costs on some projects by up to 40 percent for their U.S. customers.

“Hopefully we can pass on the price to the client, but that could also mean you don’t get the job,” said McMillion.

Read the CNN report at this link.

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Trump 'bungled' key issue — and his 'useless gimmicks' are making it worse: analyst

President Donald Trump won his second term by convincing enough Americans that then-President Joe Biden wasn't doing enough to lower prices of basic necessities, and Biden — along with Vice President Kamala Harris, by extension — were unable to persuade Americans that upward GDP growth, low unemployment numbers and a downtick in inflation rates were making the aspects of daily life more affordable.

But according to Bulwark columnist Catherine Rampell, Trump is now doing the same thing that cost Democrats the 2024 election: Insisting that the economy is strong, even as voters see that the cost of living is relentlessly rising. Rampell wrote on Thursday that Trump has learned "it’s easy to win while running as an outsider promising 'affordability,'" but that "it’s much harder to actually do anything about it."

"It’s doubly hard if you insist the problem doesn’t exist in the first place and suggest voters should just shut up about it. Triply hard if your economic policy agenda (cough-cough, tariffs) cuts in the opposite direction, making life more expensive," she continued. "Trump and his fellow Republicans have learned nothing from how badly Joe Biden and the Democrats bungled inflation. Instead they’re repeating some of the same mistakes and adopting the same useless gimmicks. Only this time, they’re also pursuing policies that make the problem worse."

Rampell observed that while Democrats swept last week's elections by hammering the issue of high prices for groceries, gasoline, housing and healthcare, Trump simultaneously claimed that his political opponents were perpetuating a "con job" on Americans. He's maintained that "prices are way down" under his administration (though Rampell countered with Federal Reserve data showing that prices are up by three percent on average in September of 2025 compared to September of 2024). Trump also famously told a reporter during a November White House event: "I don't want to hear about the affordability."

The Bulwark writer argued that Trump was simply carrying out "a more strident version of what Biden and the Democrats did during the first year of his term" by downplaying rising inflation as "propaganda" and Republican lies. She also noted that in the absence of government economic data due to the recent 43-day shutdown, Trump has relied on corporate press releases from Walmart and Doordash to argue that food prices have gone down under his leadership.

However, Rampell cautioned against the credibility of that data. She reminded readers that Walmart's 2025 Thanksgiving price list has fewer products than its 2024 list, and that the products on this year's list include more generic brands than name-brand items.

"When it comes to prices, for instance, firms always have an incentive to say they’re offering an unbeatable deal right now," she wrote. "In any event, Trump’s efforts to gaslight Americans about grocery prices clearly isn’t working."

Click here to read Rampell's full column in The Bulwark.

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Trump digs in his heels as red state voters choose 'affordability' over ballrooms

Atlanta Journal-Constitution senior political columnist Patricia Murphy said President Donald Trump is just not getting the message that red state voters are sending him.

Ever since the 2024 election results, Democrats have “clearly gotten the memo” that consumer costs are too high, said Murphy.

“Former Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond said people he talks to around the state are ‘tired of the foolishness’ and just want someone to make it easier to pay for rent and groceries,” reports Murphy, adding that Republican-turned Democrat former Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan said he’d convert the state’s $16 billion budget surplus into a “jump-start” fund to help Georgians go to school, start a business, buy a home “or otherwise move their lives forward.”

“Everybody is dealing with affordability and we’re tired of politicians telling you they’re going to fix it, and then they get elected and they just keep going on with their own agenda,” Duncan said.

Murphy said it would seem the nation’s top Republican would get the message, too, after Democrats delivered “a 26-point rout” in two usually low-profile races for the Georgia Public Service Commission, the board that regulates Georgia Power.

What happened was the economy. The all-Republican Public Service Commission had raised electricity rates for Georgians six times in the last two years, adding an average of more than $40 per month to power bills on top of what people were already paying.

“With the cost of housing, groceries and other household necessities galloping upward, it doesn’t take a political scientist to know that increasing energy rates would not go unnoticed, especially in the cities where municipal races were on the ballot Tuesday, too,” said Murphy.

And while Democrats hit a rotation of nonstop talk about monthly bills, Murphy said Republicans mostly talked about the Democrats and put identity politics ahead of pocketbooks. Public Service Commission incumbent Tim Echols warned that the Democrat challenging him would force woke “DEI” politics onto the utility.

Democrats learned their lesson in 2024 and kept the conversation about family budgets and rising costs. And even many Republicans are catching on to the problem. Murphy notes Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the PSC elections were “a referendum on affordability. We need to address that.”

Georgia technically is a “battleground state” but it is considerably more red than blue, with Republicans holding every constitutional office in the state and dominating both chambers in the Georgia General Assembly.

“They’ve got money, incumbents, a ground game, nine of 14 U.S. House seats and just sent President Donald Trump back to the White House,” Murphy said, so it would be a mistake not to take responsibility and do battle with rising costs as the top priority.

“Republicans are on board and Democrats are on board. So message received, right? Maybe not by everyone,” said Murphy. “Two days after the election, the White House put out a good-news press release that the prices of turkey, frozen vegetables and premade mashed potatoes are down ahead of Thanksgiving, ‘proof that under President Trump’s leadership, America is winning the war on high prices.’”

But Murphy points out the same report also noted that the overall cost of groceries is even higher than it was last year, which was “something that voters could have told Republicans on Tuesday — and did.”

Read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report at this link.

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Buying a new car has 'never been more expensive' — thanks to Trump: expert

Many voters elected President Donald Trump because he claimed he would cut inflation, but that does not apply to the automobile market, according to rating agencies.

“Prepare yourself because it's literally never been more expensive to buy a new car,” said CNN analyst Matt Egan. “Kelley Blue Book says that the average transaction price in September topped $50,000 for the first time ever. That's 4 percent more expensive than the same month last year.”

Egan described this as “the biggest increase year over year since 2023," and for average sized U.S. vehicles, the price was even higher.

“That's just the average price,” Egan said. “Say you're in the market for a full size car you've got to be spending an average of almost $60,000; for a full size pickup, $66,000, and SUVs averaging $76,000.”

“So, what's behind these record high prices? Well, Kelley Blue Book says that one factor here is tariffs,” Egan added. “Tariffs are adding to the cost of building a car. It's not just the auto tariffs. It's the tariffs on car parts and the tariffs on steel aluminum and copper as well.”

But, by far, the biggest factor influencing new car prices is who is buying the cars, according to Kelly Blue Book. Modest income buyers can no longer buy new cars since the November election.

“The $20,000 cars have basically gone extinct,” reported Egan. “Car makers are focusing on the higher margin, more expensive cars [because] … a lot of the cost-conscious consumers are not able to buy cars right now. A lot of them are focusing on used cars. They've been of priced out of the market, but more affluent buyers are in the market, and they're buying more expensive cars. So that's pushing up the average.”

Egan said the numbers are another reminder of the “K-shaped economy” where “people who have money in the market, money in housing are doing okay and they're buying cars. But a lot of lower income families are not buying cars right now because they're struggling to get by.”

- YouTube youtu.be

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Trump Fed appointee downplays rising grocery prices — even as inflation hits 3-year high

President Donald Trump’s new addition to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, Stephen Miran, appeared to try to downplay the significant price increases Americans are seeing at grocery store checkout lines.

“Last month saw the biggest jump in grocery prices in almost three years,” NPR reported on Friday. “A survey this summer by The Associated Press and NORC found the cost of groceries has become a major source of stress for just over half of all Americans — outpacing rent, health care and student debt.”

Last week, Axios reported that grocery inflation is at the highest point “since 2022 as Trump tariffs pile up.”

“Virtually all major grocery categories are now more expensive than they were a year ago, some substantially so,” the news outlet reported. “Coffee is up 20.9% year-over-year, with a 3.1% monthly increase, per CPI. Uncooked beef steaks are up 16.6% year-over-year with a 3.3% monthly bump. While fruits and vegetable overall were up 2.3% year over year, apples rose 9.6% and bananas, 6.6%.”

NPR also noted that despite “Trump’s promise to lower prices, the overall cost of groceries is higher now than when he was sworn in. The president’s crackdown on illegal immigration — including targeting people who pick and process our food — could add to upward pressure on prices. Trump’s tariffs are also contributing to higher prices for imported staples like bananas and coffee.”

Miran was asked about the price of bananas and coffee, specifically, on Friday during an interview with CNBC.

“But we are seeing prices move up for things like food at the grocery,” the host stated. “I mean, you can’t deny that the rising price of tomatoes or coffee or bananas, the things that we don’t grow here, are going up for consumers.”

Miran’s response: “Oh, there will always be relative price changes.”

“Relative price changes” is an economic term having to do with supply and demand and other factors.

“There will always be relative price changes, but whether or not it’s inflation that’s macroeconomically significant of the type that monetary policy should respond to is a different question,” Miran concluded.

CNBC reported that Miran told the network “that he doesn’t anticipate President Donald Trump’s tariffs will cause inflation,” and that he “also said he believes Trump’s border policies will give rise to disinflation.”

— (@)

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We bought 'no meat at all': Trump-era grocery costs balloon

NPR reports consumers are seeing no relief in sight as Trump-era grocery prices continue to skyrocket.

Last month saw the biggest jump in food prices in almost three years. And Galveston, Texas resident and retired nurse Shelia Fields is having to visit a string of grocers to stay within budget. That effort, she said, is comparable to a “full-time job.”

"Like yesterday, we went to three different stores here in town. And we bought only what was a really good sale," said Fields, who shares a fixed income with her retired husband. "So we got no meat at all. Because it's just too high."

"We've been through a lot of recessions,” Fields added. “We've been through one in the '80s and 2008. And this is the scaredest we've ever been.'

NPR reports the Fields are not the only retires worried about blowing through their savings to eat. An Associated Press and NORC survey found the cost of groceries has become a major source of stress for more than half of all Americans — outpacing rent, health care and student debt.

Cincinnati bank employee Rebecca White told NPR that she’s scouring the back of her cupboards for old cans of food and “eating a lot of spaghetti” because her paycheck has not kept pace with her rising grocery bills.

"I try to stick to cheaper meals, which isn't always healthy," said White. "Sometimes I'll skip breakfast and then just have lunch and dinner so that I don't have to buy another meal."

Additionally, officials with the Kroger supermarket chain tell NPR that shoppers are making smaller, more frequent trips to the store, using more coupons, and opting for cheaper off-label products.

President Donald Trump campaigned on lowering grocery prices, but the overall cost of groceries is higher now than when he was sworn in.

“The president's crackdown on illegal immigration — including targeting people who pick and process our food — could add to upward pressure on prices,” NPR reports. “Trump's tariffs are also contributing to higher prices for imported staples like bananas and coffee.”

Trump is aware of the power of high grocery prices because he has said repeatedly that shoppers' frustration with prices helped put him back in the White House, NPR added.

Meanwhile, White said that she's not optimistic about catching relief at the checkout line any time soon. "Once prices go up, they rarely if ever come back down," she said.

Read the full NPR report at this link.

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'Doing a pretty terrible job': Trump official mocked over response to dismal economic data

The faltering U.S. economy eight months into President Donald Trump's second term is apparently a sensitive topic for at least one administration official.

During a recent interview with Axios, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was asked about how the administration planned to handle persistently poor economic performance. Axios co-founder Mike Allen reminded Lutnick of data from August showing a 4.3 percent inflation rate — which was the highest rate on record since 2021 — and other worrying signs like a flagging manufacturing sector and the fact that there are now more unemployed workers than job openings.

"If [former President Joe] Biden had numbers like that, you'd be on Fox saying, 'what's going on?'" Allen said.

"So, the economy that Donald Trump owns starts at the end of this year," Lutnick said, which prompted Allen to interject: "It doesn't work that way!"

Lutnick's comment drew widespread mockery on social media from various economic experts, journalists and others. Former CNN and MSNBC writer John Flowers took note of Lutnick's history of shifting goalposts, writing that in late July the Commerce secretary declared that Trump's economy "has officially arrived." He then quoted Lutnick's comment from earlier this week in which he said the president's economy was "just beginning," before pivoting during his Axios interview and saying it wouldn't begin until late 2025. Liberal group MeidasTouch also quoted Lutnick's July 30 tweet in which he announced that three percent GDP growth signaled the arrival of Trump's economic regime.

"The Trump administration is doing a pretty terrible job trying to assign blame elsewhere for what doesn't work. In this case they claim the Trump economy only starts at the end of 2025," political scientist J.C. Hoffman tweeted. Everything before is Biden's fault, I guess."

"Trump‘s entire team, starting with him, is a bunch of economic illiterates," tweeted software engineer Josh Roach. "They were chosen for loyalty and now they have to go his sell snake oil to the American people. No one is gonna buy it."

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Trump says he's 'already solved inflation' — while prices for gas and groceries skyrocket

President Donald Trump has declared inflation “solved” as Americans are paying more for everyday goods like gas and groceries.

“I’ve already solved inflation,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning. “Costs are down.”

Inflation is now the highest it’s been since January, according to CNBC.

“Look at the energy costs,” he added. “You’re gonna have $2 gasoline pretty soon.”

The national average price of gas as of Friday is $3.19, according to AAA. Nationwide, prices are as high as $4.65 and as low as $2.71.

The president went on to boast, “I’ve solved just about every problem.”

But statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor show Americans are paying more—in some cases far more—at the pump and at the checkout line.

“Inflation inched higher last month as Americans closed out the summer paying more for both groceries and gasoline,” NPR reported on Thursday. “Consumer prices in August were up 2.9% from a year ago, according to a report Thursday from the Labor Department. That’s a sharper annual increase than the previous month, when inflation was clocked at 2.7%.”

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to lower prices “on day one.”

Yet, due in part to his sweeping tariffs, “Virtually all major grocery categories are now more expensive than they were a year ago, some substantially so,” according to Axios. “This was the biggest month-over-month increase since August 2022, the tail end of a year of huge monthly increases in grocery prices.”

The price of coffee is up nearly 21%, the price of uncooked beef steaks is up nearly 17%, apples are up nearly 10%, and bananas are up almost 7%.

Overall, the cost of groceries in August was up 0.6% over July’s prices, and the price of gas jumped 1.9% in just one month, according to NPR.

— (@)

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What 'voters don’t want': Republican firm warns insurance costs will doom GOP in midterms

Research reveals businesses will be hit with an increase of 9 percent or more on insurance costs in 2026, and they will push the burden of that cost onto employees and potentially spark retaliation at the polls, reports the Washington Post.

“Voters don’t want to see people losing their health insurance,” said analysts for Republican polling firm Fabrizio Ward.

“Health insurance costs in the United States are on track for their biggest jump in at least five years,” said the Post, “adding turbulence to an uncertain economy and boosting expenses for millions of Americans already beset by inflation."

But for the 24 million enrollees of Affordable Care Act insurance plans, the news is far worse. The end of enhanced federal subsidies for that program means that their costs are expected to rise by more than 75 percent next year, according to KFF, the nonpartisan health policy organization.

With inflation the top concern for many Americans, and far-reaching discontent with health care, The Post reports the spike in prices in both government-sponsored and private health insurance “could make the costs of coverage an issue in the 2026 midterm elections.”

A Gallup poll in December reported “Americans’ rating the quality of U.S. healthcare has fallen to the lowest reading in 24 years, and views of healthcare coverage nationally remain broadly negative.”

Now, even Republicans opposed to the government insurance program are fretting about the rapid rise in prices and the end of the Obamacare subsidies.

The other new force behind the price hikes are the expectation of import tariffs, with some insurers already telling regulators that expected tariffs are raising insurance prices, according to the Post. A document from United Healthcare of New York states that the organization built a price impact of 3.6 percent into initial submitted rate filings to account for “uncertainty regarding tariffs and/or the onshoring of manufacturing and their impact on total medical costs, most notably on pharmaceuticals.”

A May letter to the U.S. Commerce Department from the American Hospital Association warned that the U.S. gets nearly 30 percent of its active pharmaceutical ingredients from China.

Read the Washington Post report at this link.

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Americans having 'concerns about high prices' and joblessness in Trump's economy: report

On Friday morning, August 29, the University of Michigan published the results of a survey on American views on the state of the U.S. economy. And the researchers found that pessimism on the economy has grown even worse seven months into President Donald Trump's second term.

Forbes' Ty Roush, reporting on the survey results, explains, "Americans became more pessimistic about the economy this month than previously suggested, according to the University of Michigan’s widely tracked survey released Friday, as consumers expressed concerns about rising prices and unemployment."

Roush goes on to describe the survey's key findings.

"Consumer sentiment — a measurement of Americans' views on the economic outlook — dropped to 58.2 in August from 61.7 in July, well below the historical benchmark of 100, a reading of the University of Michigan's survey found, after economists expected the reading to hold at a preliminary reading of 58.6," Roush explained. "Americans expect inflation to rise to 4.8 percent over the next year, above July's projections of 4.5 percent, and for prices to increase 3.5 percent over the next five to 10 years, an uptick from 3.9 percent in the survey's preliminary reading, but still above last month's 3.4 percent."

Roush adds, "The survey also found roughly 63 percent of consumers believe unemployment will worsen over the next year."

In a statement, the survey's director, Joanna Hsu, pointed to "heightened concerns about high prices."

Roush notes, "The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release unemployment data next week — the first since President Donald Trump fired its director — as Wall Street expects a slight uptick from 4.2 percent in July to 4.3 percent in August, according to FactSet. About 92,500 non-farm jobs are projected to have been added last month, above the 73,000 recorded last month."

The Forbes reporter adds, "The BLS will likely face scrutiny after Trump fired commissioner Erika McEntarfer, whom he accused of manipulating jobs data during the 2024 election to benefit Kamala Harris. Trump nominated Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni as the next commissioner. Antoni, a public critic of McEntarfer, has been criticized by former Democrat officials as being 'completely unqualified' for the role and alleged Antoni may abuse his role as an 'extreme partisan.'"

Read Ty Roush's full article for Forbes at this link.

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