When running for president last year, Donald Trump wooed and wowed voters by vowing to reduce prices “starting on day one”. But once he was inaugurated, he seemed to pay precious little attention to prices and affordability.

All that changed, however, when inflation-weary voters thrashed Trump and the GOP on election day this month – within days, the Trump administration launched a slapdash effort to focus on affordability. Unfortunately, the campaign is a hot mess: a pile of absurdity, contradictions, magical thinking, scapegoating and good ol’ Trumpian dishonesty, with Trump repeatedly blaring that “prices are down”.

Two days after election day, Trump got his administration’s affordability drive off to a disastrous start when he said, “Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down … So I don’t want to hear about the affordability.”

With those words, billionaire Trump – who spends a lot of time palling around with fellow billionaires – showed utter contempt for the millions of Americans who struggle with affordability every time they go the grocery store. Trump told them they got it all wrong. He told them that they shouldn’t bother him about the trivial issue of affordability when he has bigger things to worry about, such as, perhaps, his obsession with winning the Nobel peace prize. Trump in effect said: I don’t feel your pain.

Trump’s statement about everything being “way down” was absurdly obtuse and dishonest. How in the world could every price be way down when his cherished tariffs were pushing up prices? Banana prices are up 6.9% over the past year, beef is up 14.7% and coffee up 18.9% (in part because of the huge, punitive tariffs Trump placed on Brazil’s coffee and beef). Between January and September, prices rose in five of the six main grocery groups tracked in the Consumer Price Index, including meats, poultry and fish (up 4.5%);

© The Guardian