During his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly blamed then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris for inflation. Harris fought back, warning that the aggressive tariffs Trump was proposing would make inflation much worse if he won the election.
But Trump narrowly won the election, defeating Democratic nominee Harris by roughly 1.5 percent in the popular vote (according to Cook Political Report) and returning to the White House on January 20, 2025.
President Trump has been back in office for eight days, and Washington Post opinion columnist Catherine Rampell argues that during the first week of his second term, he offered “zero plans” for “cutting prices.”
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In her January 28 column, Rampell writes, “Donald Trump has officially abandoned his promise to fix inflation. Maybe he never intended to fix it at all. The president was elected with a mandate to reduce prices, having promised that he’d lower the costs of everyday items such as eggs and bacon on Day 1. Yet a week into office, he has offered zero plans to do so.”
Rampell adds, “At best, he has ordered his underlings to brainstorm concepts of a plan for cutting prices — and then report back in a month.”
“Concepts of a plan” is a phrase that Trump famously used during his sole presidential debate with Harris in 2024. When Democratic rival Harris attacked him for wanting to overturn the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, without having a concrete alternative, Trump said he had “concepts of a plan.”
Rampell warns that although “lowering prices” wasn’t a priority for Trump during his first week back in office, he has “undertaken a litany of measures that would raise the cost of living” — including tariffs.
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“Markets breathed a sigh of relief when new tariffs did not materialize on Trump’s first day in office,” Rampell observes. “But a spat with Colombia over the weekend led him to threaten 25 percent tariffs on Colombian products, jolting coffee prices to record highs…. Meanwhile, on Friday, Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative began preparing paperwork to impose broad tariffs on China.”
The Post columnist continues, “Trump’s aides are also agitating to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada as soon as this Saturday. Contrary to Trump’s claims that only foreigners would suffer from these duties, these trade wars would raise U.S. prices on everything from tomatoes to automobiles to lumber to gasoline and natural gas.”
Rampell notes that “egg prices have also reached record highs” during Trump’s second presidency.
“To be sure,” the columnist argues, “Trump didn’t cause chickens to fall ill…. But Trump’s actions aren’t exactly helping. He has shut down external communications from U.S. public health agencies, leading to uncertainty about what kinds of updates on bird flu civil servants are even allowed to publicly disclose.”
Trump’s “immigration raids,” according to Rampell, could also increase food prices.
“As I’ve said many times before,” she observes, “there isn’t much presidents can do to reduce inflation, whatever their promises. But there’s a lot they can do to make things worse.”
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Catherine Rampell’s full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).
