Trump Vows to Keep Bringing Prices Down: Here’s What the Inflation Data Shows

The Claim

Trump made the pledge successful a station connected Truth Social, writing:

We volition proceed to bring Prices DOWN, conscionable similar Oil, Gas, Eggs, and Prescription Drugs, each of which are dropping FAST aft the catastrophe we inherited from Sleepy Joe Biden.

Image source: Truth Social

The connection extends a weeks-long unit run due to the fact that connected June 30, the president told U.S. fuel retailers to chopped pump prices “immediately,” mounting a people of around $2.50 a gallon. Moreover, his medication publicized grocery-chain moves specified arsenic Giant Eagle’s determination to chopped prices connected much than 300 often purchased products by an mean of 10% done Labor Day.

What the June Numbers Show

The government’s ain information gives the assertion meaningful, if imperfect, backing. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell 0.4% successful June connected a seasonally adjusted basis, the largest one-month diminution since April 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the past 12 months, prices roseate 3.5%, portion halfway inflation (excluding nutrient and energy) was unchanged connected the period and up 2.6% connected the year.

The vigor scale plunged 5.7% successful June aft rising 3.9% successful May, arsenic the nationalist mean for gasoline slipped to $3.86 a gallon, according to AAA data, down sharply from a May highest supra $4.50 (though inactive higher than the sub-$3 levels seen earlier the Middle East struggle began).

Eggs told a messier communicative arsenic prices rose 4.3% successful June from May, according to CPI data, adjacent though they stay 27.9% beneath year-ago levels arsenic supplies normalized pursuing an avian flu outbreak. In different words, the yearly examination flatters the inclination the president describes, portion the monthly absorption has turned against it.

Why Markets Care

Cooling header inflation shapes expectations for Federal Reserve policy, which successful crook feeds hazard assets, including crypto. Bitcoin has continued to commercialized adjacent $64,150, arsenic investors weighed the disinflation inclination against lingering geopolitical risk.

The terms propulsion besides lands amid a broader economical argumentation shake-up with Bitcoin.com News reporting that the authorities has processed $81 billion successful tariff refunds pursuing a Supreme Court ruling against the administration’s exigency tariff authority. Veteran capitalist Robert Kiyosaki, meanwhile, spent the outpouring informing that tariff turbulence could trigger a bitcoin crash helium planned to buy.

Whether the White House tin assertion recognition for June’s numbers is simply a abstracted question. Economists enactment the vigor diminution tracked planetary lipid prices arsenic Middle East tensions eased done aboriginal summer, portion ovum prices were normalizing from avian-flu-driven records agelong earlier the latest push.

Looking ahead, it volition beryllium absorbing to look astatine July’s CPI people arsenic it stands to amusement whether June’s driblet was the commencement of a durable disinflation inclination oregon a one-month reprieve.