After newly launched Consumer Price Index figures showed that the year-over-year inflation rate was 3.8% in April, the highest in almost three years, President Donald Trump tried to reassure Americans about rising costs – partly by falsely claiming the inflation rate was just 1.7% prior to the war with Iran.
“If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7%,” Trump said Tuesday. Later in his feedback to reporters, he stated that “if you go from before, just before the war, we were, for the last three months, 1.7%, and now what you have is – as soon as this war is over, you’re going to see inflation go down to probably 1.5%.”
In actuality, the inflation rate was not 1.7% in any of the three months earlier than the war.
The year-over-year increase in the Consumer Price Index was 2.7% in November 2025, 2.7% in December 2025 and 2.4% in January 2026. The rate was 2.4% again in February 2026, for which almost all the information was collected earlier than the war that started on the final day of the month. It has not been as little as 1.7% since early 2021, amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, additionally wasn’t at 1.7% in any of those pre-war months. It was 2.8% in November 2025, 2.9% in each of December 2025 and January 2026, and a couple of.8% in February 2026. It jumped to 3.5% in March 2026; the April 2026 information hasn’t been launched but.
Trump has typically spoken of core inflation, which excludes unstable meals and vitality costs, reasonably than general inflation. But he didn’t achieve this this time, and, regardless, core inflation was a minimum of 2.5% in the Consumer Price Index and a couple of.8% in the Personal Consumption Expenditures index in every month from November 2025 by February 2026.
Asked for remark Tuesday on Trump’s “1.7%” declare, White House spokesperson Kush Desai responded with a tactic that has become common from Trump’s team: ignoring the particular query about the inaccurate determine however nonetheless declaring Trump “right.”
“President Trump is right: inflation was cool and stable prior to Operation Epic Fury,” Desai stated. “The President has always been clear about temporary disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and how energy prices and inflation will quickly drop once the Iranian nuclear threat is neutralized and the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened.”
After defending the Iran war, Trump additionally claimed Tuesday: “Now, with all of this, inflation is much lower than it was under Biden. Biden had the highest inflation in the history of our country. Inflation is nothing by comparison.”
But Trump was wrong that Biden had the highest inflation in US historical past, as NCS and others have repeatedly famous when Trump has made this declare in the previous. Peak inflation below Biden, 9.1% in June 2022, was the highest in additional than 40 years, since November 1981 – nevertheless it was removed from the all-time high of 23.7%, which was reached in 1920, and even the highest level of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, 14.8%, which was reached in 1980.
The accuracy of Trump’s declare “inflation is much lower than it was under Biden” is dependent upon the way you outline “under Biden.”
Working in opposition to Trump’s declare: The present 3.8% Consumer Price Index inflation rate is larger than the rate was in every of Biden’s final 20 months in workplace together with January 2025, the month Trump took over. The rate was 3.0% in January 2025 and 2.9% in December 2024, Biden’s closing full month in the White House.
Working in favor of Trump’s declare: The present 3.8% rate is lower than half of that Biden-era 9.1% peak. It’s additionally decrease than the rate in 26 of Biden’s 48 months as president by January 2025, together with the entirety of 2022. And the cumulative increase in consumer prices in Trump’s second time period by April 2026, 4.8%, is lower than half of the cumulative enhance, 10.5%, over the equal interval of Biden’s presidency by April 2022.
There are main variations in circumstances, in fact. Biden inherited a world pandemic after which confronted the fallout from Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, whereas the present soar in inflation below Trump has been triggered by a war he selected to launch.