Donald Trump did not offer any concrete policy proposals or timeline on his campaign promise to immediately halt inflation and bring down the price of “everything” during his latest Fox News interview.
The nonspecific answers came in the interview recorded last week but broadcast in full on Monday on Fox News, where anchor Bret Baier asked the president, “If all goes to plan, when do you think families will be able to feel prices going down—groceries, energy—or are you kind of saying to them, ‘Hang on, inflation may get worse until it gets better’?”
“Look, we’re not that rich right now,” Trump responded, before bragging about his support in the U.S. auto industry, criticizing past trade policy, and threatening Canada with a potential 100 percent tariff on autos.
Later when asked again about inflation, and whether tariffs will do as economists suspect and raise prices for consumers, Trump responded, “It might but it’s ultimately going to be much less expensive,” before adding that his administration is going to pursue an unspecified set of “amazing things” for the economy.
The White House’s all-in effort to slash federal spending through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency may be alienating some voters who were attracted by Trump’s campaign promise to “immediately bring down prices, starting day one,” after record-high inflation during the Biden years.
A recent CBS / YouGov poll found that while a slim majority of respondents were supportive of Trump’s overall job performance, two-thirds said the administration isn’t dedicating enough focus to lowering prices for household goods.
Asked about prices last month, Vice President J.D. Vance was more specific, saying it will “take a little bit of time” for Trump policies like encouraging more oil production to lower overall costs.
Economists and industry observers remain skeptical that the Trump administration’s executive actions aimed at deregulation, increasing fossil fuel production, and hitting U.S. trading partners with tariffs will have any immediate effect on lowering prices.
“In the U.S., it’s the price level that determines oil production, and the expected prices don’t allow for greater production,” Francisco Blanch, head of global commodities at Bank of America, recently told El País. “The country is already dominant in energy production. And there’s already a surplus in the oil market; it doesn’t need more.”
A similar doubt exists towards how the Trump administration’s threatened tariffs on Mexico and Canada will bring down consumer prices, given that the countries together supply nearly half of U.S. food imports.
“These are products that are not easily replaced,” Rob Fox, an economist and director of CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange, told Reuters. “I can’t go out and plant tomatoes in Illinois in January and hope to replace them.”
Similarly, experts warn that the Trump administration’s recently announced 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum will further drive up consumer prices by making manufacturing inputs more expensive.
“If you put a tax on imported steel and aluminum, you will raise the price of everything that uses that — cars first and foremost,” Dean Baker, senior economist at The Center For Economic and Policy Research, told CBS News.
Making matters worse, the bird flu crisis prompted mass culls of U.S. chicken flocks during both the Biden and Trump administrations, further straining the supply and thus the price of eggs, one of the more tangible ways many households experience changes in consumer prices.
The Trump administration has blamed its predecessor for the continued shortage and high egg prices.
“As far as the egg shortage … the Biden administration and the Department of Agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last month.
Economists expect that January’s consumer price index, a measure of household prices which will be published this week, will show a modest increase in inflation.
