Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered Senate floor speeches yesterday and today, where he coined a new term to describe the current economic situation.
“Welcome to the age of Trumpflation,” Schumer said. “Inflation is the No. 1 issue on people’s minds. It was the biggest issue during the election, and Donald Trump is breaking his promise to do something about it.”
Now that Democrats are no longer in power, it is acceptable again to criticize the state of the economy.
Under former President Joe Biden, inflation hit a high of 9.1% in June 2022, with an average rate of 8% for the year, according to the U.S. Inflation Calculator.
In all four years of the first Trump administration, the average annual inflation rate hit a high of 2.4% in 2018. The best year of the Biden administration was 2024 when the inflation rate was reported as 2.9%. The average annual rate of inflation exceeded 4% in the other three years of the Biden administration.
Democrats spent three years telling the public that the inflation was “transitory” or that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. After Biden was forced out of the race to make way for former Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats began talking of a need to fix the economy again.
Democrats still had to tread cautiously, however, as strong criticism of the economy would reflect badly on the Biden administration.
With Trump back in the White House, Democrats are ready to resume their attacks, blaming him for the economy.
The best attack the Democrats can seem to muster is pointing out that Trump said he would reduce prices “on Day One.”
“Today is day 25, and inflation is not down, but up by 3%,” Schumer said.
The rate of inflation increased from 2.9% in December 2024 to 3% in January. The rate of inflation is not “up by 3%”, but it is up to 3%.
One thing that Democrats may fail to mention about the January inflation statistics is that Biden was still president for the first two-thirds of the month, and at least some of the price increase could be attributed to him.
Trump has not even been president for a month. It will take longer than one day to fix the damage of four years of inflation. Trump’s government spending cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency will likely cause inflation numbers to drop.
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Under the Biden administration, in which inflation went from 1.4% to 7% in the span of a year, Democrats largely stayed silent. Now that a Republican is in charge, it is the end of the world when inflation climbs from 2.9% to 3% in his first month.
Go figure.