--- title: 5 Statistics That Challenge Trump’s Affordability Claims description: President Donald Trump claimed a number of economic achievements during his State of the Union address. What do data show? canonical: https://time.com/7381496/trump-affordability-economy-inflation-prices/ author: Chantelle Lee article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-02-27T00:15:06.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-19T11:49:11.351Z article:section: Politics og:title: 5 Statistics That Challenge Trump’s Affordability Claims og:description: President Trump claimed a number of economic achievements during his State of the Union address. What do data show? og:url: https://time.com/7381496/trump-affordability-economy-inflation-prices/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc4ab6b1847e61f2d/69b04880035c6f9bb37a413b/Trump-SOTU-Stats-Affordability.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: President Trump Delivers The State Of The Union Address og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 5 Statistics That Challenge Trump’s Affordability Claims twitter:description: President Trump claimed a number of economic achievements during his State of the Union address. What do data show? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc4ab6b1847e61f2d/69b04880035c6f9bb37a413b/Trump-SOTU-Stats-Affordability.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Five Statistics That Challenge Trump’s Claims on Affordability > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Chantelle Lee](https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Reporter Feb 27, 2026 12:15 AM UTC  President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address during a Joint Session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 24, 2026. President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address during a Joint Session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 24, 2026. Andrew Harnik—Getty Images by [Chantelle Lee](https://time.com/author/chantelle-lee/) ## Chantelle Lee Reporter Feb 27, 2026 12:15 AM UTC President Donald Trump claimed a number of economic achievements during [his State of the Union address](https://time.com/7381059/donald-trump-state-of-the-union-full-speech-transcript/) on Tuesday evening, touting his Administration’s role in bringing down prices and cooling inflation. But publicly available data challenge, or contradict, several of his claims. The President’s first State of the Union address since his return to the White House came at a time when he’s grappling with [low approval ratings](https://time.com/7380575/trump-state-of-the-union-polling-democrats/), including over his handling of the economy, which has previously been one of Trump’s strengths. Only about 39% of U.S. adults said in a recent [AP-NORC poll](https://apnews.com/projects/polling-tracker/) that they approve of how he’s tackling the issue, whereas 59% said they disapproved of his strategy. **Read more:** [_Read Donald Trump’s Full State of the Union Speech_](https://time.com/7381059/donald-trump-state-of-the-union-full-speech-transcript/) Here are five statistics on affordability that challenge claims that Trump made during his State of the Union address. ## **The core inflation rate was 2.6% in both November and December 2025** Rising prices have been a major concern for Americans in recent years, as inflation rates rose to their highest levels in decades in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Trump made bringing down prices a key promise in his 2024 campaign, pledging at one point to “end inflation” beginning on his first day back in office, and has repeatedly pointed to falling costs and inflation rates as evidence for the success of his economic agenda since returning to office. He did so again in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, saying that “the Biden administration and its allies in Congress gave us the worst inflation in the history of our country, but in 12 months, my Administration has driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years. And in the last three months of 2025, it was down to 1.7%.” While it’s true that inflation has eased in recent months, federal data does not show as dramatic a decline as Trump has claimed. Core inflation, the metric Trump cited, is a measure of rising prices that excludes food and energy because the prices of those goods [tend to be more volatile](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/coreinflation.asp). According to the [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf), the core inflation rate was 2.6% in November 2025 and in December 2025\. The bureau said that data for October 2025 is unavailable because of the [federal government shutdown](https://time.com/7331167/longest-government-shutdown-history/) that [began](https://time.com/7322164/government-shutdown-begins-donald-trump/) on Oct. 1 and [lasted until Nov. 12](https://time.com/7333543/government-shutdown-over/). It’s not clear from what source Trump obtained the 1.7% statistic. Inflation rates were also declining before Trump returned to the White House in January 2025\. Core inflation climbed as high as [6.6%](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi%5F10132022.pdf) in 2022, but was down to 3.2% in [December 2024](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cpi%5F01152025.htm), according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ## **Beef prices were 15% higher in January 2026 than they were in January 2025** Trump claimed on Tuesday evening that the prices of many food items “are plummeting downward.” “Even beef, which was very high, is starting to come down significantly. Just hold on a little while; we’re getting it down,” he said. Beef prices have been [increasing](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/18/nx-s1-5534424/beef-prices-record-high-cost) since the beginning of the decade. Last year, the cost of ground beef reached [record highs](https://time.com/7304845/ground-beef-prices-record-highs-united-states-reasons-outlook/) in the U.S., rising by roughly 10% in June compared to a year before. The price of steak increased by 12% in the same time. While the price of beef and veal fell by about 0.9% from December 2025 to January 2026, the items are still 15% costlier in January of this year than they were in January 2025, according to the [Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf). And the average price of ground beef in U.S. cities has continued to climb, according to data from the [Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000703112), rising to roughly $6.75 per pound in January compared to $6.12 in June. Steaks, too, are more expensive than they were even a few months ago, despite a slight drop in prices in between December and January: the average price for a pound of uncooked beef steaks last month was around $12.30, according to the [St. Louis Fed](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000FC3101), compared to roughly $11.49 in June. ## **Residential energy prices were 6% higher in December 2025 compared to December 2024** Electricity prices have been [climbing](https://time.com/7355839/why-are-electricity-prices-high-2026/) for years, an increase that has, in part, been driven by inflation but is also outpacing the broader rise in costs. During his speech on Tuesday, the President suggested that those prices were declining. “Nobody can believe when they see the kind of numbers, and especially energy, when they see energy going down to numbers like that, they cannot believe it,” Trump said. “It’s like another big tax cut.” But data from the [U.S. Energy Information Administration](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/print-version.php) indicate that the residential retail price for electricity was 6% higher in December 2025 compared to December 2024\. The [Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf) similarly found that electricity prices were 6.3% higher in January 2026 compared to a year earlier, and that utility gas service grew 9.8% costlier in that same period. Other energy prices have declined, however, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data: gasoline prices were down 7.5% in January 2026 compared to January 2025, and fuel oil prices fell by 4.2% in the same period. Per [AAA](https://gasprices.aaa.com/), the national average gas price is currently $2.983, down from $3.134 a year ago. ## **Medication and medical supply prices saw little change in the past year** On Tuesday, the President praised himself for “ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs like it’s never happened before.” He said that other Presidents have tried to do so and failed, but he “got it done.” “Under my just-enacted Most-Favored Nation agreements, Americans who have, for decades, paid, by far, the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs, will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs, anywhere,” Trump said. “The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600% and more, all available right now at a new website called trumprx.gov.” It’s true that prescription drugs in the U.S. tend to be significantly more expensive than they are in peer countries. In the U.S., brand-named medications cost, on average, more than four times those in comparable nations, according to a [2024 RAND report](https://www.rand.org/news/press/2024/02/01.html) that was based on data from 2022. And, since he took office for a second time, Trump has [announced](https://time.com/7331880/white-house-deal-lowers-prices-weight-loss-drugs/) deals his Administration has made with pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily lower their prices. But some industry experts have [cast doubt](https://time.com/7285548/trump-perscription-drug-cost/) on whether those deals would result in significantly lower drug prices for Americans. The website the President mentioned, TrumpRx, currently offers discounted prices for only about 40 brand-named medications. The prices for medical care commodities—a [category](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/medical-care.htm) including medical drugs, as well as medicinal equipment and supplies—remained essentially flat during Trump’s first year in office, according to the [Bureau of Labor Statistics](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf), rising by 0.3% between January 2025 and January 2026\. Despite Trump’s claim that other Presidents have failed in their efforts to lower prescription drug prices, provisions to bring down such costs were also successfully [passed](https://www.kff.org/medicare/explaining-the-prescription-drug-provisions-in-the-inflation-reduction-act/) under former President Joe Biden in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. ## **The average price of a new car hit a record high in 2025** Trump listed cars among a number of items that he claimed were “plummeting downward” in terms of cost. “The cost of chicken, butter, fruit, hotels, automobiles, rent is lower today than when I took office by a lot,” he said on Tuesday evening. The average price of new cars fluctuates in the span of a year, but in September, the average price of a new car surpassed $50,000—a record high, according to estimates by [Kelley Blue Book](https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2025-10-13-Kelley-Blue-Book-Report-New-Vehicle-Average-Transaction-Price-Hits-Record-High-in-September,-Surges-Past-50,000-for-the-First-Time-Ever). That number fell in October, but industry experts [cautioned](https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/03/business/average-car-prices-fifty-thousand) in December that prices may rise again. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, prices for used cars and trucks did fall between January 2025 and January 2026, though that 2% drop was more measured than the “plummeting” described by Trump. 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