Americans have experienced significant price increases during the tenure of President Joe Biden – but prices have not gone up nearly as much as former President Donald Trump keeps saying.
Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has a years-old habit of using inaccurate figures even when accurate figures would serve his point. During his 2024 campaign, he has serially inflated the extent of inflation under Biden.
Perhaps most notably, Trump has claimed this month that total Biden-era inflation has been more than double what it actually has been. And since last fall, Trump has also exaggerated about oil prices, gas prices, overall energy prices, bacon prices and general food and grocery prices.
Total Biden-era inflation
Trump said at a campaign rally in Georgia on March 9: “The fact is, under Biden, we have a three-year inflation rate of almost 50%.” Trump went even bigger in a CNBC interview on March 11, saying, “I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50%.”
As The Washington Post noted last week, Trump’s claims aren’t close to true. Federal figures show that cumulative inflation from when Biden took office in January 2021 through February 2024 was 18.6% – not even half of what Trump said.
Oil prices
At his March 9 rally in Georgia and March 2 rallies in Virginia and North Carolina, Trump claimed that “the price of oil reached an all-time high” under Biden.
“Not surprisingly, the claims are not true,” Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service, told CNN. “Crude oil prices – the two benchmarks, WTI and Brent – hit their all-time highs in July 2008,” trading above $147 per barrel.
While oil prices did spike under…
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