WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s relentless mendacity lastly seems to have encountered an issue it can’t overcome: grocery costs, which, largely due to his tariffs, have been rising practically twice as rapidly as they’d below predecessor Joe Biden.
“Grocery prices are way down,” the president has been saying, time after time after time after time, for months, together with twice on Thursday and as soon as once more on Friday.
Statistics from the federal government he runs, nonetheless, belie that declare. Inflation for meals gadgets has been 3.1% since Trump declared his commerce struggle in opposition to the remainder of the world in early April, in comparison with 1.8% in Biden’s last 12 months, in response to a HuffPost evaluation of Bureau of Labor Statistics knowledge.
Trump’s tariffs — that are paid by American importers at ports of entry — have hit merchandise from just about each nation, together with these with which the United States has free commerce agreements. Items like espresso, bananas, sugar and seafood have seen probably the most dramatic worth will increase due to tariffs.
And in contrast to different of his frequent lies on subjects about which most Americans don’t have any first-hand data — for instance his declare that different nations pay U.S. tariffs or that he has ended eight wars or that he has already introduced in $22 trillion in international investments — groceries and the way a lot they price is a topic that almost everybody offers with at the very least a couple of times every week.
“I can’t tell you why the president lies, but I can tell you that everything he has said about prices being lower is a lie,” mentioned University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers. “I’m starting to think that he doesn’t actually care about the cost of living.”
Trump has appeared delicate to that suggestion, notably within the days after Republicans had been trounced in off-year elections across the nation. Voters instructed pollsters that issues weren’t going nicely within the financial system. Heading into the autumn campaigns, greater than 80% of Americans reported being careworn by grocery costs, with about half describing it as a explanation for “major” stress. New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani primarily based his complete long-shot marketing campaign on “affordability.”
Speaking with reporters Thursday at a White House dinner with leaders from Central Asian nations, Trump grew irate that Democrats had been now seen as higher on that difficulty.
“So I don’t want to hear about the affordability because right now we’re much less,” he mentioned amid a prolonged, and largely false, rant about costs being decrease due to him. “Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down, and the press doesn’t report it. The press reports whatever the con people say. You know, I call the Democrats con men and women. They make up numbers.”
Earlier within the day, taking questions from reporters within the Oval Office, Trump had responded with an avalanche of falsehoods about worldwide commerce when requested about Chief Justice John Roberts’ matter-of-fact assertion on the Supreme Court that tariffs are taxes and are paid by Americans.
“It is ― it’s coming in because they’ve charged us ― you know, those same countries that you talk about are charging us massive amounts of money. If you look at the tariffs over the years that were put on our heads, there’s a reason we’re $38 trillion owed. Now that money is going to start coming down. But we have presidents that didn’t know how to use tariffs. We had presidents that had no understanding of business. But if you take a look at what’s happened to us, every country charges tariffs. China, the European Union was brutal. They charge us tariffs, not only tariffs, they charge us tariffs so we couldn’t sell cars here. We couldn’t sell our product. They didn’t want our agriculture; they didn’t want our cars. Now they’re taking our cars and now they’re taking our agriculture, you know far more than money. It really is a defensive mechanism. If we didn’t have tariffs, we would be unable to defend ourselves,” he mentioned in a 166-word response that didn’t reply the query.
Asked once more if he agreed, lastly, that Americans pay tariffs, Trump provided a 377-word response:
“I think ― no, I don’t agree. I think that they might be paying something, but when you take the overall impact, the Americans are gaining tremendously. They’re gaining through national security. Look, I’m ending war because of these tariffs, Americans would have to fight in some of these wars. They’re gaining in national security. They’re gaining in economics. They’re gaining in so many different ways and they’re gaining in self-respect for our own country. Other countries used to laugh at us. They would charge us ― Japan was charging us massive tariffs and yet they wouldn’t allow our cars to be sold in Japan. But they were selling 9 million cars here, but they wouldn’t allow one car. Not one car was sold in Japan. They don’t laugh at us anymore. This is really a matter of ― this is national security. And by the way, going bankrupt is national security. You know, our country was really in trouble. Going bankrupt and the difference between going bankrupt and thriving, that’s also national security. When you go bankrupt, when you don’t have any money, you have no national security and we are thriving. I mean all this money coming into our country that I told you about, the $17 trillion as of now, but it’s going up rapidly. I was in Japan and we have ― Toyota is coming in with $10 billion to build plants operated by Americans, but building plants all over the United States. Well, they left ― they took our plants. They sold cars in here without tariffs. They sold cars; we didn’t charge them anything. They destroyed our auto industry. We lost 50 percent, 54 percent of our auto industry to others. We used to ― if you go back into the ’30s and ’40s, we had 100 percent of the automobile business, then it started getting chopped away. But Mexico, Canada, many countries ― I mean, Canada fought us very hard. The ones that don’t want us to win are foreign countries that we are able now to do very well with. Those are the ones that fight it, those and maybe people that hate our country. I think it’s the most important case maybe in the history of our country.”
HuffPost tried, each within the afternoon session and the night dinner, to press him about his grocery costs lie, however he wouldn’t have interaction on the query.
At one other level, Trump made the absurd assertion, “We’re taking in hundreds of trillions of dollars,” despite the fact that your entire U.S. financial system is simply about $30 trillion a 12 months.
“I have no insight on why the president says what he says, but tariffs are increasing costs for U.S. consumers, and they will continue to make Americans poorer as long as they remain in effect,” mentioned Erica York, vp of federal tax coverage on the Tax Foundation.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-grocery-lies_n_690e4e2ee4b0dd4ea75b830a