WASHINGTON ― Standing in front of a table stacked with food items at his New Jersey golf course last summer, Donald Trump complained that grocery prices had “skyrocketed” and promised to fix that if Americans made him president again: “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on day one.”
Ninety-six days later, grocery prices have not come down, not even a little.
In his first 100 days in office, Trump has managed quite a bit: upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers; unilaterally sentencing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of migrants to life sentences in a notorious El Salvador prison; switching sides in the Ukraine war to favor the aggressor; and costing Americans trillions from their retirement accounts while putting the country on the path to a trade-war-induced recession. One thing he has not done: lower Americans’ grocery bills.
While overall inflation has trended slightly downward since Trump took office, food inflation has not. In fact, not only have grocery prices increased each month since he took office, that inflation rate itself has
increased in each of the three months since Trump’s return, so that the inflation rate for groceries is now at its highest point in nearly two years.