Nicolai Haugsted
Trump returns to the White House with a rosy economic message before a fact-checker picks it apart.
Donald Trump returned to the White House on Sunday evening with plenty to celebrate.
The president had spent part of the day in Illinois watching Team USA complete its comeback victory at the Presidents Cup, adding another American win to a tournament the country has dominated for decades.
Politics was waiting when he got back.
Speaking to reporters after landing, Trump offered an upbeat assessment of the US economy and argued that prices were moving in the right direction.
Official inflation data tells a considerably less cheerful story.
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale quickly went through the numbers and challenged one claim in particular: Americans are not generally paying less for their groceries than they were when Trump returned to office.
Trump says prices are going down
Trump used his return to Washington to paint a positive picture of the economy.
“With the exception of oil, which is lower than under the Biden administration, and we no longer have to worry about nuclear weapons because Iran has been wiped out … prices are going down. We have it going down,” Trump told reporters.
“We inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country, and it’s really going down.”
Trump then pointed toward financial markets as another indication that the economy was performing well.
“401Ks are at an all-time high. The stock market is at an all-time high, and our country is doing really well,” he said.
Stock-market performance and consumer prices, however, measure very different things.
Americans buying groceries are still confronting prices that are generally higher than they were a year ago.
The grocery aisle tells another story
Latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that food-at-home prices were 2.2 percent higher in August than they had been 12 months earlier.
Overall consumer prices rose 3.4 percent over the same period. August itself offered little evidence of widespread grocery deflation either.
Food-at-home prices were unchanged overall during the month, while four of the six major grocery categories tracked by BLS increased. Fruits and vegetables declined, while cereals and bakery products were unchanged.
Some individual products have certainly become cheaper.
That distinction became the focus of Dale’s response to the president.
“Overall grocery prices are up 3.4% since Jan. 2025, and way more grocery items are up than down,” Dale wrote on X.
Falling prices for a handful of products are not the same thing as a broad decline across supermarket shelves.
Eggs are doing a lot of heavy lifting
Eggs provide perhaps the clearest example of why individual price declines can produce a misleading impression of the bigger picture.
Prices soared during the bird-flu outbreak that hit poultry supplies before subsequently dropping sharply.
Dale acknowledged that decline while arguing that it does not support Trump’s much broader description.
“In summary: The price of eggs has fallen big under Trump after spiking late in Biden’s term because of a bird flu outbreak; a few other items have gotten cheaper, but by much less than eggs; the overwhelming majority of items have gotten more expensive,” Dale wrote.
“It’s fair to note that grocery prices tend to rise no matter who the president is. But this president keeps lying that there has been grocery deflation.”
Official data supports the central distinction behind Dale’s criticism. Some prices can fall even while the overall grocery bill continues climbing.
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Lower inflation does not mean lower prices
Trump’s remarks also highlight a distinction that frequently gets lost in political arguments about inflation.
Lower inflation means prices are increasing more slowly.
It does not mean prices themselves are falling.
Trump inherited an annual inflation rate of approximately 3 percent when he returned to office in January 2025. Inflation had previously reached 9.1 percent under Joe Biden in June 2022 before declining substantially during the remainder of Biden’s presidency.
Calling the situation Trump inherited “the worst inflation in the history of our country” therefore goes far beyond the historical data.
America has experienced dramatically higher inflation before.
CPI rose 23.7 percent during the 12 months ending in June 1920, while the 9.1 percent peak recorded under Biden was the highest since November 1981 rather than an all-time record.
Current inflation is not disappearing either.
August’s 3.4 percent annual CPI reading was actually higher than the 3 percent rate around the beginning of Trump’s second term.
Affordability refuses to disappear
Political sensitivity surrounding prices makes Trump’s comments more consequential than a disagreement over statistics.
Households experience inflation through grocery receipts, utility bills, housing expenses and fuel costs rather than through an abstract national percentage.
Energy has recently become especially painful.
BLS figures show energy prices were 16.3 percent higher in August than a year earlier, while gasoline was up 27.4 percent over that period.
Such numbers help explain why affordability remains a potent political issue ahead of the midterm elections.
Trump has previously dismissed Democratic emphasis on affordability as a political “hoax,” while repeatedly arguing that his administration has brought prices down.
Available data paints a more complicated picture.
Individual products have become cheaper, and some categories have experienced periods of falling prices.
The overall consumer price level, however, continues to rise.
A victory on the golf course cannot fix the grocery math
Sunday had otherwise offered Trump a considerably easier set of numbers to celebrate.
Team USA’s victory at the Presidents Cup gave the Americans their 11th win in the competition before the president headed back to Washington.
Economic statistics proved less accommodating once he arrived.
Trump’s argument depends heavily on highlighting products and periods where prices have declined while presenting that movement as evidence of a broader trend.
BLS data does not show broad consumer-price deflation.
Grocery prices are higher than a year ago. Overall prices are higher than a year ago. Inflation also remains above the rate recorded around the beginning of Trump’s second term.
Eggs may have become substantially cheaper after their earlier spike.
The rest of the shopping cart has not followed them down.
