Inflation has remained a key concern among Americans since the COVID-19 pandemic, and its centrality to the 2024 presidential election has meant rising prices and affordability issues more generally are in focus for lawmakers and political strategists heading into the November midterm elections. With inflation running higher—3.4 this month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—than the Federal Reserve’s long-term target of 2 percent—due in large part to energy increases and other impacts from the Iran war—polls continue to show that Americans have waning confidence in the economy and the administration’s handling of it. In response to an NBC poll showing that 55 percent of registered voters believe President Donald Trump’s policies have "hurt economic conditions," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Newsweek that the president "remains committed to unleashing American energy dominance, cutting costs, and putting more money back in the pockets of hard-working American families." When approached for comment on Friday, the White House said "hard data" showed that the American consumer "remains resilient thanks to the president’s proven economic agenda of tax cuts and deregulation." And Trump has attempted to assure Americans that, despite these frustrations, they are better off financially than during President Joe Biden’s administration.
"Gas prices were much higher under Biden than under ‘TRUMP,’" the president wrote in a late-night post to his platform Truth Social on Sunday. "So were almost all other prices." Newsweek compared prices for a basket of everyday items across both presidencies using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data collected by the St. The charts show that both presidents saw prices rise markedly during their time in office, with each experiencing sharp spikes in certain goods that became central economic and political issues.
Beef and coffee have seen some of the largest gains during Trump’s second term, though egg prices have fallen more than 50 percent since he returned to office last January. Prior to that, eggs tripled in price between January 2021 and January 2025, with beef also climbing, though most increases were relatively steady despite runaway inflation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Prices were already rising when Biden entered office as the economy continued to recover post-pandemic.
Inflation soared to more than 9 percent by June 2022, however, as the war in Ukraine led to global supply chain disruptions and ballooning energy costs. Contrary to Trump’s remarks, all nine goods were, on average, nominally cheaper under Biden. But direct sticker-price comparisons come with the caveat that prices were, due to inflation, on average lower during the Biden administration.
Prices, as measured by the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), have risen around 28 percent overall since January 2021. Only prices that have risen by more than that amount could be considered outliers, so products that rose by less became cheaper in real terms when accounting for broader inflation. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton and Dave Siminoff.
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