Economists may be surprised by the campaign promise because low, Stable inflation is a symptom of a healthy economy. If consumers can expect relative price increases, they can plan their spending and save accordingly, while businesses can also reasonably budget for additional costs.

What Trump may be trying to convey is that he will scale back the widespread rate hike, after inflation stands comfortably ahead of the Fed’s 2% target through 2024. The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the annual rate of inflation is currently sitting at 2.7%.

Recent analysisshared exclusively with luckfrom Senator Elizabeth Warren’s group on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee reported this year-over-year increase equals an additional cost of $2,120 per household, assuming they buy the same goods and services in 2025 as they did in 2024. That includes an increase of $123 in electricity bills and $150 in groceries.

Politicians on the other side of the bank may argue that prices and NEED will still rise as a result of the Fed targeting inflation to 2%, and that it is difficult to quantify how much the White House policy has added to the price increase. However, in the context of Trump’s second administration, the question is whether tariffs and tit-for-tat trade wars will have more. the additional cost remains relevant.

2025, after all, is the year of the Liberation Day tariffs. On April 2, President Trump announced a raft of additional duties on every country on the planet—including those with trade agreements. Since then, several partners have negotiated with the White House, and while below the first threatened threshold, the agreements still resulted in increased taxes on both sides.

There is also increasing debate over whether these cost increases will bite. Trump’s cabinet suggested that the large increase in prices that many feared had not happened, while others pointed to the fact that inflation rose steadily from April to September, and remained high. Trump’s team also described any jump in prices as a blip: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for example, said that any potential inflationary pass-through as a “a one-time adjustment.”

Can consumers afford to ‘see’?

Even for a one-off, consumers still have to pay for that change, argued Emma Hussey, a policy adviser to Sen. Warren on the Banking Committee. He told luck: “Fed policymakers can debate whether to ‘look at’ inflation, but families can’t choose to look at higher costs. Trump’s chaotic tariffs and failed economic policies increase prices—even if these price increases are ‘one-time’ in the data, they are permanent for families that are already stretched thin.

Senator Warren emphasized that President Trump promised families lower costs from “one day,” but said his economic agenda is “to squeeze families who are already struggling to get by. This analysis shows that Trump’s broken promises have real consequences and they are reflected every month in the bills of Americans,” he added.

The perception of competence has proven to be a difficult subject to fight with voters, even if the pandemic has proven to be a rare Black Swan event in the economy. As David A. Steinberg, Associate Professor at John Hopkins University wrote in a 2024 study: “Simply asking people to think about inflation reduced approval of the Biden-Harris administration and reduced confidence in the ability of Democratic Party leadership to manage the economy. In other words, when people thought about inflation, their support for the Democratic Party fell.”

For the Trump administration, arguments that tariffs lead to higher prices may be offset by the amount of revenue they generate: $289 billion by 2025 alone. This, in turn, the White House promised to share with the public in the form of $2,000 rebate checks (although the economic practicality of this plan remains to be seen).

And despite some volatility, Trump 2.0 still manages a period of strong economic growth, with GDP at 4.4% in the third quarter of 2025.

It’s a fact the White House wants to emphasize, as spokesman Kush Desai said luck: “The simple reality is that Americans have actually gotten better since President Trump took office with cooling inflation, real wages, and economic growth — the exact opposite of what happened under Joe Biden.”