On the menu today: There are a bunch of people in the White House who are attempting to craft a solid, fact-based message about how the administration’s policies are trying to make basic staples of life like gasoline and groceries more affordable, and to help Americans keep up with the rising cost of living. Unfortunately, the president of the United States is not one of those people, because he prefers to insist that he has already solved the problems of affordability. Read on.
In Sticker Shock Denial
On Monday, the White House put out a fact sheet, pledging “more relief on the way” and touting signs of increasing affordability in the U.S. economy.
The first item was from KDVR in Denver, Colo., declaring, “Cheapest gas prices in Denver hit less than $2 Sunday ahead of Thanksgiving weekend. . . . Gas prices in Denver are trending down just in time for the busy Thanksgiving travel weekend, with one station in the city even hitting less than $2 on Sunday, according to GasBuddy.”
That’s great news if you live near the Shell station at 7273 East Evans Avenue in Denver.
Overall, according to AAA, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas is $3.06. A week ago, it was $3.07, and a month ago, it was $3.06. One year ago, in the concluding months of the Biden administration, the national average price for a gallon of regular was . . . $3.05. The national prices listed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration are the same — $3.06 per gallon as of November 17, $3.05 as of one year ago.
The good news, of a sort, is that gasoline prices have remained fairly flat since Trump took office, steady at a bit more than three dollars per gallon. (Again, that’s the national average. The West Coast is always more expensive; the average in California right now is $4.60 per gallon. Portions of the south are usually cheapest; the average in Oklahoma is currently $2.50 per gallon.)
The bad news is that since taking office, President Trump has repeatedly insisted that gas prices will soon be close to two dollars a gallon, or at two dollars a gallon, or below two dollars a gallon. During a press conference in Tokyo on October 28, Trump predicted, “I think you’re gonna see two-dollar gasoline pretty soon.” On November 7, Trump said, “We’re going to be at $2 gasoline. We’re going to be approximately $2 very soon. We’re a little bit above $2 right now for gasoline.” Last week in Saudi Arabia, Trump said, “Gasoline is way down, I think you’ll be seeing $2 gasoline, but we’re now at $2.50, $2.45, some are lower than that.”
We can argue about what time qualifies as “very soon,” but we can at least agree that a national average of $3.06 is not “approximately $2.”
Credit whoever runs the White House communications shop for recognizing that the right message now is, “We’re working on it”:
Make no mistake: this is not “mission accomplished.” Americans are still paying far too much after four years of reckless Democrat spending and regulation — and that’s why the Trump Administration is relentlessly fighting to deliver the bold, structural changes that will bring lasting relief to all American families.
The bad news is while that is the message from the White House communications shop, that is not the message from President Trump. When Trump talks about the economy, he prefers to insist that the problems are already solved.
At the McDonalds Impact Summit on November 17, Trump boasted, “This is also the golden age of America, because we are doing better than we’ve ever done as a country. Prices are coming down and all of that stuff. And you know, they talk about different terms for that, but I will tell you that nobody has done what we’ve done in terms of pricing. . . . In the nine months since I took office, we’ve stopped inflation in its tracks since January.”
Since January 2025, the Consumer Price Index has ranged between 3.3 percent and 2.7 percent. That’s much better than the worst days of the Biden administration in 2022, but that’s also roughly where it was for Biden’s final year in office.
At the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum November 19, Trump said, “We’re also making incredible strides to make America affordable again. That’s a new word that they’re using, affordability, they talk of affordable. We’re bringing prices down, but they came up with a new word, affordability. And they look at the — we are all about affordability. . . . Walmart just announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal is reduced by 25 percent this year from last year.”
As discussed earlier, this is because this year’s edition of the Walmart “inflation-free Thanksgiving meal” includes considerably less food than last year, removing the pecan pie, whipped topping, mini-marshmallows, muffin mix, poultry seasoning, chicken broth, sweet potatoes, onions, and celery.
In his Oval Office meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani November 21, Trump said, “Some of his ideas really are the same ideas that I have. But a big thing on cost, you know, the new word is affordability, another word is just groceries. It’s sort of an old-fashioned word, but it’s — it’s very accurate and they’re coming down — they’re coming down.”
Few Americans would agree that grocery prices are “coming down.” As of November 9, the average national price of a pound of chicken breasts is up 24 cents from one year ago, a pound of bacon is 35 cents more expensive, a pound of ground beef is 78 cents more expensive, and 32 ounces of orange juice is $1.08 more expensive. The good news: A dozen eggs are four cents less expensive than a year ago, and a loaf of bread is only up four cents.
And yet, just last night, Trump shared on Truth Social a post contending that his second term has had low inflation.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published a long feature article contending, “The middle class is buckling under almost five years of persistent inflation”:
America’s middle class is weary.
After nearly five years of high prices, many middle-class earners thought life would be more affordable by now. Costs for goods and services are 25 percent above where they were in 2020. Even though the inflation rate is below its recent 2022 high, certain essentials like coffee, ground beef and car repairs are up markedly this year. . . .
The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey showed that 44 percent of middle-income respondents said their financial situation was worse than it was a year ago, while 23 percent said it was better, based on a three-month average ending in September. Those who feel worse off overwhelmingly said it was because of higher prices. . . .
Inflation started to pick up in spring 2021 and peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022. By the beginning of 2025, the middle class had spent down all their extra savings, often to keep up with higher costs, according to Moody’s. Wage increases weren’t much help — they were consumed by inflation, too.
More details from that Moody’s report:
“Looking at the data, it’s not a mystery why most Americans feel like the economy isn’t working for them,” [Chief economist Mark] Zandi wrote. “For those in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution, those making less than approximately $175,000 a year, their spending has simply kept pace with inflation since the pandemic.”
“The 20 percent of households that make more have done much better, and those in the top 3.3 percent of the distribution have done much, much, much better.”
[Tuan Nguyen, a U.S. economist at RSM US] did offer a note of caution — one which the Fed will also be mindful of at its meeting this week — which is that a sharp rise in spending over the past three months was driven by higher prices. Nguyen notes that inflation “likely accounted for as much as half of the gain.”
Tariffs aren’t the only reason why prices are going up, but they are a significant contributing factor. From the Tax Foundation:
The latest data through early October show that tariffs have raised retail prices on average by about 4.9 percentage points relative to the pre-tariff trend, 6.0 percentage points for imported goods and 4.3 percentage points for domestic goods. Several goods have experienced notably large price increases, including apparel (8.99 percentage points), coffee and tea (7.5 percentage points), cameras (7.5 percentage points), household textiles (6.2 percentage points), and furniture (6.5 percentage points).
In November, the Americans in the handful of states with elections 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.” It’s been a long time since President Trump pumped his own gas or shopped for his own groceries, if he ever has.
Politicians can spin the public on a lot of things, but it’s extremely difficult to fool people into believing their finances are better than they are. People know how much they usually pay to fill up their tank, how much their usual grocery bill is, and whether the car repairs are way more expensive than the last time.
There are no doubt some Americans out there who voted for Donald Trump because they really wanted to see Jim Comey and Tish James punished. (The indictments were dismissed without prejudice, as accurately predicted by our Andy McCarthy.)
There are no doubt Americans out there who want to see the Pentagon investigate and punish Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly for his role in the Democrats’ video accusing the president of the United States of making 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. In the 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. Fifty-three percent said inflation had caused their family “moderate hardship,” and this group split in favor of Trump, 52 percent to 46 percent. Just 24 percent of respondents said that 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.
ADDENDUM: Gregory Slayton, writing here at NR about the so-called “peace deal” in the works from the Trump administration:
The proposal requires enormous Ukrainian concessions while demanding remarkably little from the aggressor responsible for more than almost 2 million killed or wounded and 10 million civilian refugees. This imbalance is not just morally repugnant; it is strategically disastrous. . . .
The asymmetry of the ledger is breathtaking. While Ukraine would be required to trade tangible, irreversible assets (territory, defensible borders, and military capacity) Russia is asked for only the most ephemeral of commodities: Vladimir Putin’s promises.
And yesterday’s newsletter covered the appalling history of Putin’s broken promises, a review of history that one reader dismissed as “virtue signaling.” Because if there’s anything conservatives stand for, it is scorning the lessons of history, both recent and not-so-recent.
Greg continues:
Most perversely, the aggressor is not just absolved; he is enriched. Under this plan, sanctions would vanish, the G8 would welcome a war criminal back into the fold, and American firms would be encouraged to resume partnerships with Russian competitors in critical sectors like artificial intelligence and Arctic energy.
This would be diplomatic insanity. Why would the United States voluntarily aid the technological modernization of an adversary that has explicitly designated us as a strategic enemy?
If this peace deal goes through on Russia’s terms, it’s going to make the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan under President Biden look like the invasion of Normandy.