Trump goes on the offense on inflation as polling shows public pressure to act

President Donald Trump and his administration are going on offense on inflation as January saw a spike in that metric, pursuing strategies to tackle the prices of everyday items like eggs and portraying the price hikes as a product of profligate spending.

Inflation reached an annualized rate of 3.0% in January, a modest uptick after the 2.9% in December. Trump notably campaigned on lowering prices and fighting inflation, though the issue was largely not part of his major moves during his first few weeks in office. Polling data, moreover, had found that the public approved of his efforts to implement his agenda, but the majority did not believe he was paying an appropriate amount of attention to inflation.

“Inflation is back”

“Inflation is back,” Trump conceded during a Tuesday evening interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. The remarks represented his first high-profile discussion of the subject since directing federal agencies to study the problem on his first day.

Trump then pivoted to portraying the price hikes as a product of trillions in spending under the previous administration. “I had nothing to do with it. They spend money like nobody’s ever spent it,” he said. “They were given $9 trillion to throw out the window — 9 trillion.”

Trump’s comments appear to refer to the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act, both exorbitant spending packages from the last administration that included allotments for partisan projects favored by the Democrats.

His comments are far from the first linking government spending to price hikes, but signal a modest shift in messaging for Trump, who has long promised to boost energy production as a means of driving down prices. 

"It's going to start with energy," he said at a town hall event last September. "We're going to drill, baby, drill. Energy is coming way down. Energy is coming way down. And when energy comes down, everything else follows. That's what started this onslaught of inflation that’s the greatest we've ever had in our country.”

Action on spending

His remarks to Hannity came shortly before he weighed in on a budget impasse between House and Senate Republicans.

“The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it! Trump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday.

“We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to ‘kickstart’ the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, ‘ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.’ It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he added. Much of that dispute involves whether to pass many of Trump’s desired reforms through a single reconciliation vehicle or to split the legislation into two bills.

Trump’s support for the one-bill package could tip the scale toward the House’s plan, which would tackle both the border and tax reforms, as opposed to the Senate plan of doing one and then the other. The one-bill package would furthermore, presumably expedite the financial changes that Trump hopes will bolster the economy.

The price of eggs

In the meantime, the Department of Agriculture has moved to address the rising cost of eggs, an everyday staple that specifically attracted attention amid a surge of Avian flu during the election cycle. 

“Avian flu is a massive issue right now. We’ve been dealing with it in this country for the last few years,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Fox News. “Bad policy, overregulation, and the avian flu created the perfect storm, resulting in record-high egg prices.” As a result of that outbreak, Biden ordered that more than 100 million chickens be destroyed. Many hens lay their first egg around 18 weeks of age and then lay up to an egg each day, subject to breed, environment and individual bird.

Ordinarily, farmers will kill all the birds on a farm should they detect bird flu. The administration essentially hopes to vaccinate chickens and limit killings in order to keep egg production high. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CBS that Washington would seek “better ways, with biosecurity and medication and so on.”

The public wants improvement ASAP

The public is growing somewhat impatient, however, and polling data has suggested Trump needs to take decisive action. A recent CBS News survey, for instance, found that 66% believed Trump had not addressed inflation enough while 31% believed he had appropriately handled it.

The media's pivot to the economy, moreover, could be a contributor to that sentiment. During the campaign, many legacy outlets pointed to topline economic data to assert that the economy under Biden was improving, but has since admitted the data was inaccurate and taken to attacking Trump over the situation.

Despite the media pivot, the public definitely wants action on inflation. During a recent CNN segment, the network’s Harry Enten warned “Inflation ate the Joe Biden presidency alive. It crushed it. If these numbers remain the same, inflation will do the exact same thing to Donald Trump’s second term. It will eat it alive. It will crush it.”