{"id":845809,"date":"2026-09-13T00:58:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T00:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845809\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T00:58:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T00:58:25","slug":"inflation-and-the-midterm-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845809\/","title":{"rendered":"Inflation and the midterm elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

INFLATION AND THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS.\u00a0On Friday, the Commerce Department released<\/a> inflation figures for August, and what they show is \u2026 more of the same. The year-over-year inflation<\/a> rate last month was 3.4%, a rate unchanged from July and one many analysts call \u201cstubbornly high.\u201d<\/p>\n

For President Donald Trump,\u00a0it\u2019s a stubborn problem. Trump campaigned on a promise to bring down inflation, and millions of people voted for him to do just that. When Trump took office in January 2025, the rate stood at 3%. It dipped in Trump\u2019s first few months, hitting 2.3% in April 2025. But it later rose, and now, after Trump has been in office 19 months, it is 3.4% in the new report. The bottom line is that Trump has not brought down the rate of inflation.<\/p>\n

Of course, as many Trump supporters will point out,\u00a0a 3.4% annual rate is wonderful compared to the worst inflation of the Joe Biden era<\/a>. In June 2022, inflation hit 9.1%, a rate not seen since the bad old days of Jimmy Carter. But with the Federal Reserve<\/a> raising interest rates, the annual rate fell to 6.4% in January 2023 and then kept falling, hitting 3% in June 2023. It stayed in that range for the rest of Biden\u2019s presidency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So Trump inherited\u00a0an inflation rate of 3%. It\u2019s fair to say that many Trump supporters expected inflation to be lower by now. One of the main drivers keeping that from happening has been Trump\u2019s tariffs, which, while they have had less negative effect on the economy than many hysterical reports at the time predicted, have still raised some prices. Another, of course, is Trump\u2019s decision to launch the Iran war, now in its seventh month, which has caused a big rise in energy prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The president has made several statements\u00a0that indicate he is quite sensitive to the connection between the war and gas prices. At a campaign rally<\/a> in Garden City, New York, last month, he made a frank appeal for more patience. \u201cSo I just say this, for you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you\u2019re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have \u2014 a country, really, it\u2019s the No. 1 state sponsor of terror in the world. We don\u2019t want them to have a nuclear weapon. So remember that, when you have to pay a little bit more. You\u2019re at $4 [a gallon]. It\u2019s OK. I mean, it\u2019s \u2014 I\u2019m not \u2014 I\u2019m not, I\u2019ll never apologize. I did the right thing, but you could \u2014 you know if you didn\u2019t have [the war] you\u2019d be at, I mean, I had it down to below $2 in many states.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week,\u00a0with the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Trump predicted that the war will end \u201cimmediately after the election.\u201d And that, he added, means gas prices will go down then, too. \u201cShortly, but right after the election, because they\u2019d like to have it that way, but right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to be tumbling down and we\u2019ll get them down, I think, for gasoline. We\u2019ll get them below $2 a gallon, but not until after the midterms. I think it\u2019s going to take a little bit longer than the midterms.\u201d<\/p>\n

As with previous inflation reports,\u00a0energy is by far the main problem for prices in the new CPI report. The price of gasoline was up 27.4% in August over the year before, while fuel oil was up 52% in the same period. Other products were up, but at a far lower rate: fruits and vegetables, 3.2%; nonalcoholic beverages, 3.7%; full-service restaurant meals, 3.5%; and more. Some portion of those increases, of course, is attributable to higher energy costs.<\/p>\n

The midterm elections are 54 days away,\u00a0and with the president himself predicting the Iran war will last until after the voting, it seems clear that energy prices will continue to be a problem for Trump and the Republican Party. And that is on top of the reality that a majority of voters already disapproves of the war and Trump\u2019s handling of it. It could add up to a tough midterm experience for Republicans.<\/p>\n

In his main address\u00a0to the GOP midterm convention, Trump placed a lot of the blame for inflation on Democratic green energy programs. \u201cOur predecessors killed and buried the American dream with trillions of dollars in waste and green energy scams, the greatest scams in American history \u2014 green energy,\u201d Trump said. \u201cEvery country that\u2019s gone green is down the tubes, you do know that. But it caused prices to skyrocket. They used the word affordability, right? It\u2019s fake. They are so fake, because it was them that caused the affordability, to use their word, crisis. And I\u2019m bringing the prices way down, way, way down. They caused the prices, but we\u2019re fixing it.\u201d Perhaps \u2014 but not, it appears, in time for the midterm elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INFLATION AND THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS.\u00a0On Friday, the Commerce Department released inflation figures for August, and what they show…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[164749,28,40097,40098,12,101,2402,1052,2186],"class_list":["post-845809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-2026-elections","tag-business","tag-byron-york","tag-daily-memo","tag-donald-trump","tag-economy","tag-inflation","tag-prices","tag-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}