Trump Finally Meets A Problem His Lies Cannot Overcome: Rising Grocery Prices

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s relentless lying finally appears to have encountered a problem it cannot overcome: grocery prices, which, in large part because of his tariffs, have been rising nearly twice as quickly as they had under predecessor Joe Biden.

“Grocery prices are way down,” the president has been saying, time after time after time after time, for months, including twice on Thursday and once again on Friday.

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Statistics from the government he runs, however, belie that claim. Inflation for food items has been 3.1% since Trump declared his trade war against the rest of the world in early April, compared to 1.8% in Biden’s final year, according to a HuffPost analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Trump’s tariffs — which are paid by American importers at ports of entry — have hit products from virtually every country, including those with which the United States has free trade agreements. Items like coffee, bananas, sugar and seafood have seen the most dramatic price increases thanks to tariffs.

And unlike other of his frequent lies on topics about which most Americans have no first-hand knowledge — for example his claim that other countries pay U.S. tariffs or that he has ended eight wars or that he has already brought in $22 trillion in foreign investments — groceries and how much they cost is a subject that nearly everyone deals with at least once or twice a 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,” said University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers. “I’m starting to think that he doesn’t actually care about the cost of living.”

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Trump has seemed sensitive to that suggestion, particularly in the days after Republicans were trounced in off-year elections around the country. Voters told pollsters that things were not going well in the economy. Heading into the fall campaigns, more than 80% of Americans reported being stressed by grocery prices, with about half describing it as a cause of “major” stress. New York City’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani based his entire long-shot campaign on “affordability.”

Speaking with reporters Thursday at a White House dinner with leaders from Central Asian countries, Trump grew irate that Democrats were now seen as better on that issue.

“So I don’t want to hear about the affordability because right now we’re much less,” he said amid a lengthy, and largely false, rant about prices being lower thanks 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 in the day, taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office, Trump had responded with an avalanche of falsehoods about international trade when asked about Chief Justice John Roberts’ matter-of-fact statement at the Supreme Court that tariffs are taxes and are paid by Americans.

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“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 said in a 166-word response that did not answer the question.

Asked again if he agreed, finally, that Americans pay tariffs, Trump offered 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, both in the afternoon session and the evening dinner, to press him about his grocery prices lie, but he would not engage on the question.

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At another point, Trump made the absurd assertion, “We’re taking in hundreds of trillions of dollars,” even though the entire U.S. economy is only about $30 trillion a year.

“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,” said Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation.

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