Trump Promised Lower Food Prices On Day 1 – 99 Days Later, He Has Delivered The Opposite

Former US President Donald Trump during a news conference at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, US, on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. WASHINGTON ― Standing in front of a table stacked with food items at his New Jersey golf course last summer, Donald Trump complained that grocery prices had “skyrocketed” and promised to fix that if Americans made him president again: “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one.”Ninety-six days later, grocery prices have not come down, not even a little.In his first 100 days in office, Trump has managed quite a bit: upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers; unilaterally sentencing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of migrants to life sentences in a notorious El Salvador prison; switching sides in the Ukraine war to favour the aggressor; and costing Americans trillions from their retirement accounts while putting the country on the path to a trade-war-induced recession. One thing he has not done: lower Americans’ grocery bills.While overall inflation has trended slightly downward since Trump took office, food inflation has not. In fact, not only have grocery prices increased each month since he took office, that inflation rate itself has increased in each of the three months since Trump’s return, so that the inflation rate for groceries is now at its highest point in nearly two years.“Just 100 days in, the reality is wildly different, and voters are noticing,” said Democratic pollster and consultant Matt McDermott. “Day One was supposed to bring relief, not recession.”Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who for years has been conducting focus groups studying Trump’s supporters, said they, too, are noticing. “There is a meaningful slice of Trump voters who voted for Trump specifically because he promised to lower prices on groceries, etc,” she said. “Many of these voters express frustration that Trump isn’t doing more to lower costs.”Trump’s response to his failure on the single most important issue to the median voter in the November election has been a favorite standby: He has simply lied about it.“Groceries have come down,” he said in an Oval Office photo opportunity on Tuesday, and then focused on eggs in particular. “The cost of eggs have come down like 93, 94% since we took office.”In fact, eggs got expensive under predecessor Joe Biden and then got even more expensive after Trump took office because of a bird flu epidemic. For Trump’s claim to be correct, eggs would have to be selling for about 35 cents a dozen now, which they clearly are not.Trump well understood the primacy of the issue both during the campaign ― promising to lower grocery prices on “Day 1” was a common line in his rally speeches ― as well as after he had barely eked out a win over Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris.“I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries,” Trump told NBC News in December. “When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. We’re going to bring those prices way down.”The following month, upon retaking office, Trump did sign an executive order on the topic of inflation, which instructed his agencies “to deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people.”It’s unclear what, if anything, resulted from that directive, as both grocery prices and other goods have continued to get more expensive at about the same rate they had been doing so for the last year of Biden’s term.That, though, was before Trump launched his trade war against the rest of the planet early this month. And while his most recent stance ― after a number of flip-flops ― appears to back away from the highest tariffs he has imposed on Chinese goods, the damage to the economy has already begun and cannot be averted. Donald Trump’s response to his failure on the single most important issue to the median voter in the November election: to lie.Transoceanic shipping traffic was scrambled by the promise of massive new taxes on American importers. This is already disrupting supply chains and is guaranteed to create shortages and possibly increase prices on imports, at least temporarily and perhaps indefinitely, within the coming months. Because the United States imports $263 billion in food ― from tomatoes from Mexico to vanilla beans from Madagascar ― those prices are also set to increase, which will drive up grocery prices even more.“Trump ran on fighting inflation. Instead, he’s fueling it,” McDermott said.The public, meanwhile, appears to have learned enough about Trump’s trade war to conclude that they hate it. Recent polls show that Trump’s approval ratings on the economy, which were always his greatest strength during his first term and as he ran to regain the White House over the next four years, have now tanked.Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation by 20 or more points in new surveys by Reuters and The Economist, while the latter also shows that those Americans, by a 30-point margin, say his policies have hurt them rather than helped them.“His No. 1 campaign promise was ‘I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately.’ But instead he’s raising prices with tariffs that are now the biggest middle class tax hike in decades,” said Andrew Bates, a deputy press secretary in Biden’s White House.That Trump could not actually bring lower prices is not surprising. Deflation almost never happens, absent a calamitous economic crisis. Indeed, it was the concerted effort of the entire United States government during the Covid-19 pandemic to avoid such a calamity that caused high prices in 2022 and 2023 in the first place.The Federal Reserve Board lowered interest rates to near zero to keep money flowing, while both the Trump and Biden administrations sent Americans a total of $5.7 trillion in stimulus checks, payroll grants, and other aid ― two-thirds of which was signed into law by Trump ― to prevent consumer spending from plummeting.Trump and his allies, nevertheless, have argued that only the one-third of Covid spending approved by Biden caused all the inflation, while Trump also floats a fanciful theory that it was Biden’s emphasis on renewable energy rather than oil and gas that worsened inflation.Trump has repeatedly claimed that his plan to vastly increase fossil fuel production in the United States will lead to lower prices on everything, while his imposition of massive import taxes ― paid entirely by Americans ― will finance all manner of programs, including cheap child care.Actual economists say his promises make no sense and cannot be fulfilled.Related...Trump Appointee Is Going After Wikipedia For Allegedly Spreading ‘Propaganda’Donald Trump Says Putin 'Maybe Doesn't Want To Stop The War' Following Talks With ZelenskyyTrump Suggests He Wants To Cross One Of Ukraine's Major Red Lines In Peace Talks

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