{"id":310663,"date":"2025-12-11T20:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/310663\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T20:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:34:07","slug":"trump-says-u-s-prices-are-coming-down-tremendously-heres-what-the-data-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/310663\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says U.S. prices are “coming down tremendously.” Here’s what the data shows."},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump delivered a message Tuesday evening aimed at the millions of Americans struggling to afford daily necessities<\/a>, saying his administration is “crushing” inflation<\/a> and that “prices are coming down tremendously.” Economic data tells a different story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prices have edged higher for much of Mr. Trump’s first year back in the White House, with inflation in September rising at an annual rate of 3%<\/a> (the most recent available inflation data because of the recent U.S. government shutdown<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Inflation dipped to a low this year of 2.3% in April, but it has steadily ticked up since then and now stands at the same rate as in January, when Mr. Trump was inaugurated, federal data shows<\/a>. Economists attribute the rise partly to the Trump administration’s new tariffs on imports<\/a>, with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell pointing to those levies as a key factor behind the recent uptick.<\/p>\n

Inflation now “is higher than earlier in the year as inflation for goods has picked up, reflecting the impact of tariffs,” Powell said at a press conference on Wednesday to discuss the central bank’s latest interest rate cut<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some Wall Street analysts think prices are likely to continue creeping up for a while. Mark Vickery, senior market analyst at Zacks Investment Research, estimates that the Consumer Price Index rose at an annual rate of around 3.3% in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To be sure, many economists, as well as the Fed, expect any additional pickup in inflation to be short-lived before easing in 2026. Powell on Wednesday said the tariff effect will likely create a one-time rise in prices that should fade over the coming year. The Fed expects inflation to recede to 2.4% next year, down from about 2.9% in 2025.<\/p>\n

From a longer-term perspective, inflation has indeed fallen sharply since hitting a 40-year high of about 9% in June 2022 in the aftermath of the pandemic. For shoppers, however, a lower inflation rate doesn’t mean prices are declining \u2014 only that they’re rising at a slower pace.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Consumers tend not to view pocketbook issues through the lens of official inflation measures, a somewhat abstract metric that tracks price fluctuations over time, experts have long noted. Instead, many shoppers focus on their actual dollars-and-cents spending, including whether their out-of-pocket expenses are higher than they were in the past, according<\/a> to research from the University of Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By that yardstick, Americans are spending more on everyday basics than they were a year ago, and far more than they did just before the pandemic, CPI data shows.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump’s remarks<\/a>, made Tuesday in Mount Pocono, Pa., came as his administration touts the president’s economic policies ahead of next year’s midterm elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I have no higher priority than making America affordable,” Mr. Trump said in the speech.<\/p>\n

Prior to the speech, Mr. Trump had decried affordability as a “hoax” perpetuated by Democrats, although some Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have differed with him on the issue. Greene told CBS News that she doesn’t believe affordability is a hoax, adding, “Everyone’s bills have either stayed the same or gone up.”<\/p>\n

“You can’t gaslight people and tell them that their bills are affordable,” Greene said.<\/p>\n

White House spokesman Kush Desai expressed confidence that Mr. Trump’s agenda will cool inflation and boost worker wages.<\/p>\n

“President Trump inherited the worst inflation crisis in a generation from Joe Biden’s incompetence, and his Administration has rapidly cooled inflation to a 2.5% annualized rate,” Desai said in a statement to CBS News. “As the administration’s supply-side policies of tax cuts, deregulation and energy abundance continue taking effect, Americans can count on inflation continuing to fall and real wages continuing to rise.”<\/p>\n

Food\u00a0<\/p>\n

Americans paid 2.7% more for food bought at the grocery store in September than they did a year earlier, according to the most recent CPI figures. That may not seem like much, but their grocery bills have climbed roughly 49% since 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

See the CBS News price tracker<\/a> showing changes in the price of food, gas, utilities and other costs<\/p>\n

Some food costs are also rising much faster than the rate of inflation, with beef steaks surging almost 17% from a year ago<\/a>, according to the CPI data. Earlier this month, the Trump administration sought to lower some grocery prices by exempting foods like beef<\/a>, coffee and bananas from new country-specific tariffs.<\/p>\n

Shoppers on Tuesday told CBS News’ Nancy Cordes that they are making tradeoffs and scrimping to afford groceries.<\/p>\n

“The cost of beef is astronomical. I will mainly get what’s on sale,” Anne Marie Hadley, a retired special education teacher who was shopping Tuesday at Schiel’s Family Market, a family-owned grocery store in Scranton, Pa., told Cordes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Housing<\/p>\n

While mortgage rates have dropped this year, housing remains out of reach for most would-be buyers. More than 75% of homes across the country are unaffordable for the typical household, Bankrate said in a report<\/a> this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A homebuyer today needs to earn $131,400 a year to afford a typical home in the U.S. \u2014 almost double the roughly $65,000 needed five years ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Almost three-quarters of Americans said housing has grown more unaffordable in their communities in recent years, according<\/a> to an October poll from YouGov and the University of Florida Center for Public Interest Communications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gas<\/p>\n

One area where consumers are getting a break is at the pump, with gasoline prices down from a year earlier. Gas declined 0.5% in September from a year earlier, CPI data shows. And earlier this month, gas dropped below $3 a gallon<\/a> on average, marking the lowest price since May 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It was just reported that four states had $1.99 a gallon,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday. “We are right now involved in more energy, and have more energy in the works by far than we’ve ever had before.”<\/p>\n

The decline is due to strong refinery output and lower crude oil prices, as well as to softer seasonal fuel demand, GasBuddy has said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet while fuel prices have dropped, other energy costs have increased. Residential electricity prices around the U.S. rose more than 10%<\/a> over the first eight months of 2025, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, an educational and policy organization. By comparison, power costs rose roughly 6% over the trailing 12 months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of June, nearly one in 20 U.S. households was seriously behind on their utility bills, according to a report<\/a> from The Century Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, and advocacy group Protect Borrowers. Over the last three years, the average overdue balance on utility bills climbed from $597 to $789, a 32% jump, the groups found.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2014 With reporting by CBS News’ Nancy Cordes.<\/p>\n

\n Edited by<\/p>\n

Alain Sherter<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

\n Go deeper with The Free Press\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump delivered a message Tuesday evening aimed at the millions of Americans struggling to afford daily necessities,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,141,1294,1431,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-310663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-inflation","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}