As rising prices hit Americans, Trump keeps insisting costs are down

Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election a year ago in large part because of voter outrage over the high cost of living in the Biden administration's post-pandemic economy.

With Trump now nearly 10 months back in the White House, prices for many household items are still rising, and U.S. voters are telling pollsters that they're feeling the economic pinch.

Yet the president is pushing back, not only against the notion that his tariffs are in any way contributing to inflation, but even against the fact that costs are going up.

It's part of the growing evidence that Trump and the White House realize they're politically vulnerable on affordability issues but have yet to figure out how to tackle people's cost concerns beyond denying them.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham pressed Trump on how affordability factored into the results of last week's elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City.

"Is this a voter perception issue of the economy, or is there more that needs to be done by Republicans on Capitol Hill, or done in terms of policy?" Ingraham asked in an interview Monday.

Trump's answer, in effect, was none of the above.

"More than anything else, it's a con job by the Democrats," he said, then complained that anchors on other networks declare that costs are going up because the Democrats tell them to.

Ingraham probed further, asking Trump whether he was saying that voters are "misperceiving how they feel."

He responded by talking about his lead over Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2024 election campaign and didn't address her question.

During that campaign, Trump promised repeatedly to "make America affordable again." Yet the statistics show his administration has yet to accomplish that.

The latest consumer price index figures (for September) put the price of groceries 2.7 per cent higher than in the same month of 2024, and up 1.4 per cent from January, when Trump was sworn in.

Those same statistics show prices up year over year in nearly every category of household purchases: housing up 3.6 per cent, medical care up 3.9 per cent, car insurance up 3.1 per cent and electricity up 5.1 per cent.

Despite those increases, Trump keeps insisting otherwise.