President Trump speaks briefly to the press as he departs the White House on Friday for his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.
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For as much that has happened in these first two weeks of the Trump presidency — and it’s been a lot — one particular thing has been conspicuously absent: a focus on lowering prices.
Trump’s promises to bring down the cost of living were a big reason he was elected, but since taking office he has now twice said that’s not his top priority.
“They all said inflation was the No. 1 issue,” Trump said about the presidential campaign as he spoke to supporters at the Capitol following his inauguration address. “I said, ‘I disagree. I think people coming into our country from prisons and from mental institutions is a bigger issue for the people that I know.’ And I made it my No. 1. I talked about inflation, too, but you know how many times can you say that an apple has doubled in cost?”
(It’s been fact checked many times that migrants were not coming into the country from prisons and mental institutions, but Trump continues to say it.)
Again on Monday, Trump reiterated that immigration is the bigger issue.
“I always felt the border was first,” he said in a speech to congressional Republicans gathered at Trump National Doral Miami Golf Resort.
“I talked about that much more so than I did inflation,” Trump said. “I mean, inflation was terrible. I think it was the worst in the history of our country, but you can only talk about it so long. The price of apples doubled. The price of bacon has quadrupled. Everything is a disaster. And you say it, and then what do you do?”
Recent inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. That was the highest since 1981, but it wasn’t the highest ever. The most recent inflation data shows it is down to 2.9%.
A top problem Trump said he would fix
Undoubtedly, though, higher than pre-pandemic prices and high interest rates intended to curb inflation put Americans in a bad mood — and is a big reason, if not the reason, Trump won in 2024.
He said so himself.
“I won on the border, and I won on groceries,” Trump said on NBC’s Meet the Press in his first interview after the election. “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.”
He made similar pledges about the economy during the campaign and ran an ad saying he would “fix it” (as well as immigration). He told a voter at a town hall in Pennsylvania in October: “We’re going to get your prices down.”
As president, Trump is seeking to extend his broad tax cuts, expand oil exploration and deregulate industry — things he believes will spur more growth and help bring down prices in what experts already consider a strong economy.
“My administration is acting with unprecedented speed to fix the disasters we’ve inherited from a totally inept group of people and to solve every single crisis facing our country,” Trump told the World Economic Forum gathered in Davos, Switzerland last week. “This begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration.”
