President-elect Donald Trump admitted in an interview with Time magazine that it will be difficult for him to reduce consumer prices, contrary to statements he made on the campaign trail this year.
Trump told Time in an hourlong interview for its “Person of the Year” feature that his presidency wouldn’t be a failure if he failed to bring the price of groceries down.
“I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. But I think that they will,” Trump said, according to the transcript.
Trump is right that it’s very hard to achieve across-the-board price reductions. Curbing inflation is only a matter of slowing the rate of price increases — actual economy-wide price drops typically don’t happen outside of a massive economic downturn.
Nevertheless, Trump repeatedly told voters during the campaign that electing him president would cause prices to tumble.
“Prices will come down,” Trump said during a rally in August. “You just watch: They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything.”
“We will end inflation and make America affordable again, and we’re going to get the prices down, we have to get them down,” Trump said at a rally in September. “It’s too much. Groceries, cars, everything. We’re going to get the prices down.”
“We will cut your taxes and inflation, slash your prices, raise your wages and bring thousands of factories back to America,” Trump said at a Georgia rally in October, reciting a line he used in speeches at several other events.
Trump also specifically promised to get gas prices down: “I will cut your energy prices in half within 12 months.”
Trump said during the campaign, and in his Time interview, that cutting regulations would reduce oil prices, which would supposedly drive price reductions everywhere else in the economy. One obstacle to the plan is that it would be up to energy companies, not the government, to ramp up oil production, and doing so would not necessarily be profitable for them. Another obstacle is that oil prices are set by a global market that U.S. doesn’t control.
Nevertheless, the idea that Trump’s election would solve complex economic problems was a core message of the Trump campaign.
“Kamala Harris broke the private-sector economy, and Donald J. Trump is going to fix it, and of course, whether it’s housing prices, whether it’s mortgage interest rates, whether it’s grocery prices, everything has gotten more expensive under Kamala Harris’ leadership,” Vice President-elect JD Vance said before the election at an event in November. “So again, we have to ask ourselves, do we want a president who broke the economy, broke the border, broke your wallets or do we want a president who has already fixed it and will fix it again.”
In every survey leading up to the election, most voters said the economy and inflation were the most important issues, and most of those who said so also said they believed Trump would be better at addressing the problem. Concern over inflation may have been the biggest single explanation for Trump’s victory.
Inflation soared above 9% in 2022 as a result of supply chain problems related to the coronavirus pandemic and strong consumer demand that had been buttressed by stimulus checks and other relief policies both Trump and President Joe Biden championed.
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates to help bring down inflation, a process that many economists expected would increase unemployment by reducing demand for goods and services. Unemployment rose only modestly; cutting consumer demand enough to induce corporations to slash prices likely would also push them to lay off millions of workers.
But Trump never outlined a clear plan to reduce prices. His signature economic policy proposal during the campaign was to impose tariffs on imported goods, something economists said was more likely to spike prices since the companies that pay the tariffs can simply pass the cost on to consumers.
Trump’s remarks to Time echoed similar backtracking he made on his promise that his proposed tariffs wouldn’t boost prices.
“I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow,” he told NBC News’ Kristen Welker on “Meet The Press” on Sunday.
Trump also said in his Time interview his would reduce supply chain disruptions that he claimed were continuing to push up prices.
“You know, the supply chain is still broken. It’s broken. You see it. You go out to the docks and you see all these containers,” he said.
According to a comprehensive measure of supply chain pressure produced by the New York Federal Reserve Bank, global supply chain disruptions have dissipated since spiking in 2021 and 2022.