Fact check: Five false claims Trump made about inflation last night
In a speech Tuesday night to Republican members of Congress, Trump delivered a series of inaccurate assertions on the subject of prices.
He wrongly claimed that gas was selling Tuesday for below $2 a gallon 'in five different states' (it was actually zero states); that prices are 'all down' (consumer prices are up under Trump); that Democrats are lying when they say prices are up (these Democrats are correct); that grocery prices 'are down' (they are up under Trump); and that core inflation is 'below 2%' (it's 2.9%, per the Consumer Price Index).
Here is a fact check.
Trump: 'Gasoline … we had $1.99 a gallon today in five different states.'
False. Of the tens of thousands of gas stations nationwide tracked by the company GasBuddy, there was not a single station offering gas for $1.99 per gallon or less on Tuesday, said Patrick De Haan, the company's head of petroleum analysis. (Some drivers get special discounts.) And no state had an average Tuesday gas price lower than Mississippi's $2.71 per gallon, according to data published by AAA.
Trump has regularly claimed this year that two, three, or five states have sub-$2 gas, but CNN has never found any of these claims to be true.
Trump: 'Groceries are down.'
False. Grocery prices are up during this Trump presidency. Grocery prices in June were about 0.6% higher than they were in January, the month Trump was inaugurated, and about 2.4% higher than they were in June 2024, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data.
Grocery prices did fall this April, as egg prices dropped sharply after a spike caused by an avian flu outbreak, but grocery prices then increased again in May and June.
Trump: 'Prices are all down. I don't think there's any price — other than we have a real terrible, terrible head of the Fed, and if he brought down interest …'
False. Regardless of anyone's opinion of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and interest rate policy, US prices are not 'all down'; in reality, prices have continued to increase during Trump's second presidency. As of June, overall consumer prices were about 2.7% higher than they were in June 2024, about 0.3% higher than they were in May 2025, and about 1.5% higher than they were in January 2025.
Given this overall increase in prices since January, it's obvious that prices have gone up in various individual categories — so the president's suggestion that not a single price has increased is clearly untrue.
It's important to note that it's normal for prices to rise over time; the Federal Reserve generally aims for 2% inflation over the long run. Trump could fairly say that inflation remains nowhere near the levels of 2022, when it briefly topped 9%, and that his new tariffs have not immediately caused a massive inflation spike.
But Trump made a signature campaign pledge to immediately bring prices down, not to keep prices increasing at a moderate pace. Contrary to his claim on Tuesday, that promised decline hasn't happened.
Trump: 'I watch the Democrats, and they get on these shows. 'Well, prices are up. Energy is up. Gasoline is through the roof. Food and groceries are up.' They lie.'
Nonsense. It's correct, not a lie, to say overall prices, grocery prices and food prices in general are up during this presidency. And though oil prices are down in world markets, the gasoline prices paid by US drivers have increased slightly since Trump returned to the White House. (They certainly aren't 'through the roof,' but Trump didn't identify the Democrats who supposedly claimed they are.)
The national average price for a gallon of regular gas on Tuesday was about $3.14 per gallon, according to AAA data. That's up from about $3.12 per gallon on Trump's second inauguration day in January – though, as GasBuddy's De Haan noted to CNN, the national average is now lower than it was at this point on the calendar in every year since pandemic-era 2021.
Trump: 'Core inflation is way down, below 2%. Think of that.'
False. Core inflation is not below 2%. This measure, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, showed prices up about 2.9% in June compared with June 2024, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index data.
Other oft-cited measures of core inflation are also above 2%. The most recent data from the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index showed core inflation up about 2.7% in May compared with May 2024, while the most recent data from the Producer Price Index showed core inflation up about 2.6% in June compared with June 2024.
The accuracy of Trump's claim that core inflation is 'way down' depends on where you start the clock. The 2.9% Consumer Price Index core inflation rate in June 2025 was up from March, April and May (it was about 2.8% each of those months), but it was down from about 3.3% in January.
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