President Donald Trump retains saying beef is the only grocery product that has gotten more expensive throughout his second presidency.
“Groceries are down except for the beef, which I’ll get down too,” he said in a speech final week in Tokyo. “Groceries are way down, other than beef,” he said in a Fox News interview on Wednesday. “(Grocery prices) went up under Biden. Right now, they’re going down. Other than beef, which we’re working on, which we can solve very quickly,” he said in a CBS interview taped final week. “We have much lower prices than (Democrats) do, and we only have one thing, beef,” he said on the White House on Thursday.
Trump’s declare that grocery costs are down is incorrect. And so is his declare that beef is the only grocery product that has elevated in value.
Grocery costs are up, not down. Grocery costs have elevated throughout Trump’s second time period. Average US grocery costs in September had been 1.4% increased than they had been in January, the month he returned to workplace, and a pair of.7% increased than they had been in September 2024 below former President Joe Biden, Consumer Price Index figures show. The 0.6% improve in common grocery costs from July 2025 to August 2025 was the largest month-to-month soar in three years, and it was adopted by a 0.3% improve from August to September.
It’s not simply beef – not even shut. The costs of dozens of grocery merchandise elevated from January to September. A smattering of merchandise received cheaper, notably together with eggs, but a far better quantity of merchandise received more expensive.
You can see the lengthy record of will increase within the graphic beneath.
“The president’s claims about grocery prices don’t align with the government’s own data,” Michigan State University professor David Ortega, a meals economist, mentioned in a Thursday e mail. He added, “While it’s true that beef prices have risen to record highs, they’re far from the only category seeing increases. … The reality is that prices for many everyday grocery items have increased in recent months, and tariff-related cost increases are now feeding through to consumers.”
Prices elevated from January to September in 5 of the six overarching teams of grocery costs tracked by the federal authorities’s Consumer Price Index: meats, poultry, fish, and eggs (up 4.5%); nonalcoholic beverages and beverage materials (up 2.8%); cereals and bakery products (up 1.4%); fruits and vegetables (up 1.3%); and “other food at home” (up 0.8%). Only the dairy and related products group was down, declining 0.2%.
Grocery costs, like total costs, are likely to rise over time, and so they can bounce round for all kinds of causes unrelated to the actions of the president. But consultants like Ortega say two of Trump’s signature insurance policies have clearly contributed to this year’s will increase: giant and broad tariffs on imported items (including food and meals packaging supplies) and a crackdown on undocumented immigrants (who make up a large percentage of the US farm workforce).
The value of raw floor beef was up 14.2% between January and September. There was a fair greater improve, 15.3%, within the value of espresso; espresso consumed within the US is nearly completely imported, and far of it’s now hit with big tariffs. Bananas, one other product that’s virtually completely imported within the US and now faces substantial tariffs, noticed a 7.9% spike since January.
Below is an inventory of the January-to-September modifications within the value of 56 grocery merchandise or product classes tracked by the Consumer Price Index.