Trump promised the lowest food prices on day 1. 99 days later he has delivered otherwise.

Washington – In standing in front of a table full of food in its New Jersey golf course last summer, Donald Trump complained that the prices of the groceries had “shot” and promised to fix that if the Americans made him president again: “When winning, I will immediately lower prices, starting the first day.”

Ninety -six days later, the prices of the groceries have not lowered, not even a little.

In his first 100 days in office, Trump has achieved a lot: to turn the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers; Unilaterally sentencing hundreds, perhaps thousands, from migrants to life imprisonment in a notorious prison in El Salvador; Change side in the Ukraine War to favor the aggressor; and cost the Americans billion of their retirement accounts while putting the country on the road to a recession induced by the commercial war. One thing that has not done: supermarket invoices of low Americans.

While general inflation has had a slightly descending trend since Trump assumed office, food inflation has not done so. In fact, not only the prices of the groceries have not increased each month since he assumed the position, that the inflation rate has increased in each of the three months since Trump’s return, so the inflation rate for the groceries is now at its highest point in almost two years.

“Only 100 days later, the reality is very different, and the voters are noticing,” said Democratic polls and consultant Matt Mcdermott. “The first day would bring relief, not to the recession.”

Sarah Longwell, a republican consultant who for years has carried out focal groups studying Trump’s supporters, said they are also noticing. “There is a significant portion of Trump voters who voted for Trump specifically because he promised to reduce prices in groceries, etc.”, he said. “Many of these voters express the frustration that Trump is not doing more to reduce costs.”

Trump’s response to his failure in the most important topic for the medium voter in the November elections has been a favorite wait: he has simply lied about it.

“The groceries have lowered,” he said in an Oval photograph opportunity of the office on Tuesday, and then focused on eggs in particular. “The cost of eggs has fallen as 93, 94% since we assumed the position.”

In fact, the eggs got expensive under the predecessor Joe Biden and then became even more expensive after Trump assumed the position due to an avian flu epidemic. So that Trump’s statement is correct, eggs would have to sell for approximately 35 cents per dozen now, which are not clearly.

Trump understood well the primacy of the problem during the campaign: promising the prices of supermarkets in “Day 1” was a common line in his rally speeches, as well as after he had barely obtained a victory over the vice president of Biden, Kamala Harris.

“I won in edible. Very simple word, edible,” Trump told NBC News in December. “When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they doubled and tripled the price for a short period of time, and won an choice depending on that. We will reduce those prices.”

The following month, when the position resumed, Trump signed an executive order on the issue of inflation, which instructed his agencies “to deliver the relief of emergency prices, in accordance with the applicable law, to the US people.”

It is not clear what, if something, resulted from that directive, since both the prices of supermarkets and other goods have remained more expensive at the same rate they had been doing during the last year of the Biden period.

However, that was before Trump launched his commercial war against the rest of the planet earlier this month. And although its most recent position, after a series of flip flops, seems to get away from the highest rates that it has imposed on Chinese products, damage to the economy has already begun and cannot be avoided.

Bing Guan/Bloomberg through Getty Images

Transoceanic shipping trafficking was scrambled by the promise of new mass taxes on American importers. This is already interrupting supply chains and is guaranteed to create shortage and possibly increase import prices, at least temporary and perhaps indefinitely, in the coming months. Because the United States imports $ 263 billion in food, from tomatoes from Mexico to Madagascar vanilla grains, those prices will also increase, which will increase even more the prices of grocers.

“Trump ran to fight inflation. Instead, he’s feeding it,” McDermott said.

Meanwhile, the public seems to have learned enough about Trump’s commercial war to conclude that they hate him. Recent surveys show that Trump’s approval ratings in the economy, which were always their greatest strength during their first mandate and, while running to recover the White House in the next four years, have now shuddered.

The Americans disapprove of Trump’s inflation management for 20 or more points in new Reuters and the economist surveys, while the latter also shows that those Americans, by a margin of 30 points, say that their policies have hurt them instead of having helped them.

“His campaign promise number 1 was ‘I will end the devastating inflation crisis immediately’. But instead, prices with tariffs are increasing that are now the largest increase in middle class taxes in decades,” said Andrew Bates, deputy press secretary of the White House of Biden.

That Trump could not really bring lower prices is not surprising. Deflation almost never happens, in the absence of a caulmic economic crisis. In fact, it was the concerted effort of the entire United States government during the Covid-19 pandemic to avoid such calamity that caused high prices in 2022 and 2023 first.

The Federal Reserve Board reduced interest rates almost zero to keep the money fluid, while both Trump’s and Biden administrations sent to the Americans a total of $ 5.7 billion in stimulus checks, payroll subsidies and other help, of which two were signed in law by Trump “to prevent consumer spending from getting into hunting.

Trump and his allies, however, have argued that only the third of Covid spending approved by Biden caused all inflation, while Trump also floats a fantasy theory that it was Biden’s emphasis on renewable energy instead of oil and gas that worsened inflation.

Trump has repeatedly stated that his plan to greatly increase fossil fuels in the United States will lead to lower prices in everything, while its imposition of mass import taxes, paid completely by Americans, will finance all kinds of programs, including cheap child care.

Real economists say their promises make no sense and cannot be fulfilled.