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On Wednesday, President Donald Trump shrugged off a federal report showing that inflation in the U.S. has reached its highest levels since 2023, telling reporters in the Oval Office that he “loves[s] the inflation.”
The monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicated that inflation went up by 4.2 percent over the past year. A separate report on wage growth showed that average weekly earnings for Americans increased by only 3.7 percent over the same time period, indicating that rising prices outpaced wages.
When it comes to staple items regularly purchased by Americans, the price increases were much higher. Fish and seafood prices went up by 6.5 percent, for example, and the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables went up by 6.7 percent. Coffee is up 17.5 percent over the past year, and beef costs have increased by 12.9 percent. Energy prices are also up, with electricity and home gas services up a collective 5.3 percent.
Trump took questions in the White House shortly after the report was issued.
“Are you concerned about the latest inflation number that came out this morning?” a reporter asked the president.
“No, I love it. The numbers were great,” Trump said.
“I love the inflation,” Trump added.
Trump then claimed that he was aware prices would rise due to his war on Iran, and that prices would go down once the war was over.
“When it’s over, you will see oil drop to where it was before,” Trump said. “It’s coming down. It’s going to come down like a rock.”
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However, when the war will end is a question no one seems to have an answer for. Since launching the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in late February, Trump has claimed more than three dozen times that a deal was around the corner, only for negotiations to fizzle out every time. Meanwhile, his recent assertion that regular hostilities are set to resume indicates that the war will continue to drag on with no deal in sight.
Rising oil costs, due to the disruption of transport through the Strait of Hormuz, have indeed led to a rise in costs for other consumer goods, as gasoline and diesel are needed to deliver those goods across much of the United States. But even with a sudden end to the war and a resumption of oil flow through the strait, gas costs are unlikely to return to pre-war prices for quite some time.
According to an Energy Information Administration (EIA) report in April, gas prices will remain around $3.70 per gallon, on average, through the rest of 2026. Prices are expected to be around $3.46 per gallon, on average, through the rest of 2027, too — far higher than the $2.93 per gallon that gas cost one week before the start of the war on Iran.
Notably, inflation rates were troubling even before the war, and some of Trump’s economic policies drove prices up before the conflict began.
According to a CPI report examining numbers in December, the inflation rate at that time was around 2.7 percent — not much different from where inflation stood one year prior to Trump taking office, when it was 2.9 percent. Returning to how the economy looked before the war is unlikely to alleviate Americans’ views on how the administration is handling the rise in consumer prices.
Indeed, Trump is currently receiving a failing grade from voters when it comes to his handling of inflation. In — the day before Trump said that he “loved” the high inflation numbers — only 24 percent said they approve of how Trump is handling the issue, while 68 percent said they disapprove.
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