Seventy-seven percent of Americans — including 55 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of independents — say that President Trump’s policies have increased their cost of living, according to a new CNN poll.
My latest Financial Times column explores this:
When people walk into grocery stores or look at restaurant menus, they experience jarring sticker shock. The overall level of prices is 25 per cent higher than it was just five years ago.
Part of that increase was caused by pandemic-era supply disruptions. But my calculations suggest that President Joe Biden’s massive $1.9tn stimulus in 2021 contributed around 3 percentage points to that year’s inflation. The Federal Reserve should have responded aggressively. Instead, it kept interest rates near zero per cent for a full year after the Biden stimulus became law, only raising rates after 12 consecutive months of above-target inflation, by which time CPI inflation was above 8 per cent.
In the column, I remind that it is the Fed’s responsibility to keep price inflation low and stable — not the president’s. But when it comes to affordability concerns, President Trump isn’t blameless. I offer some suggestions for ways the president could try to turn things around.
After the pandemic, the Fed did not begin raising interest rates above 0% until consumer price inflation hit 8% — a full year after the Biden stimulus had been signed into law and a full year after inflation rose above the Fed's target rate. pic.twitter.com/ZmprK827vf
— Michael R. Strain (@MichaelRStrain) May 14, 2026