There has been talk that Kevin Hassett is Trump’s choice:
KARL: The president claims that Thanksgiving costs are down 25%. Does he know that's not true?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 16, 2025
HASSETT: Well if you look at Walmart–
KARL: Wait a minute. I've gotta stop you. The Walmart package this year contains much less than the one last year. That's why the price is less.… pic.twitter.com/wOycGah79S
KARL: The president claims that Thanksgiving costs are down 25%. Does he know that’s not true?
HASSETT: Well if you look at Walmart–
KARL: Wait a minute. I’ve gotta stop you. The Walmart package this year contains much less than the one last year. That’s why the price is less.
HASSETT: I don’t understand where you’re going
Then he starts babbling about Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden and says that inflation is half of what it was in December.
That is a lie. We don’t have the official inflation rate for October because of the shutdown but the annual inflation rate in the US rose to 3% in September 2025, the highest since January.
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in September, after rising 0.4 percent in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.0 percent before seasonal adjustment. Note that September CPI data collection was completed before the lapse in appropriations.
The index for gasoline rose 4.1 percent in September and was the largest factor in the all items monthly increase, as the index for energy rose 1.5 percent over the month. The food index increased 0.2 percent over the month as the food at home index rose 0.3 percent and the food away from home index increased 0.1 percent.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in September, after rising 0.3 percent in each of the 2 preceding months. Indexes that increased over the month include shelter, airline fares, recreation, household furnishings and operations, and apparel. The indexes for motor vehicle insurance, used cars and trucks, and communication were among the few major indexes that decreased in September.
The all items index rose 3.0 percent for the 12 months ending September, after rising 2.9 percent over the 12 months ending August. The all items less food and energy index also rose 3.0 percent over the last 12 months. The energy indexincreased 2.8 percent for the 12 months ending September. The food index increased 3.1 percent over the last year.
December 2024: The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in December, after rising 0.3 percent in November, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.9 percent before seasonal adjustment.
They love to say that Trump inherited an economic crisis. The way they describe it it was worse than the great Depression. But that’s projection as usual. Biden was the one who inherited the pandemic economic crisis and successfully engineered a soft landing. Trump inherited a growing economy and then started deporting a bunch of workers and started a trade war for no reason and sent it reeling.
Here’s what happened during the Biden years:
The shocks to food and energy prices contributed substantially to the sharp rise in inflation during the COVID-19 period. Energy price shocks were the primary cause of the high inflation rates from late 2021 to the middle of 2022. Lower energy prices in the second half of 2022 contributed to the inflation decline during that period.
2. The combined effects of increased demand for durables and shortages caused by supply-chain disruptions were the main source of inflation in the second quarter of 2021. Both the direct and indirect effects of those supply-chain problems remained substantial through the end of 2022.
3. Tight labor-market conditions, one of the main concerns of the early critics of U.S fiscal and monetary policy, contributed only slightly to inflation. In fact, the tight labor market affected the economy negatively in 2020 and early 2021. Since then, however, the traditional Phillips-curve effect has begun to reemerge, with the high vacancy-to-unemployment ratio becoming an increasingly important factor in the high inflation rates.
Bernanke and Blanchard argue that the critics’ concerns of higher inflation were correct. But the sources of the high inflation differed from those the critics had anticipated. The authors conclude that price shocks in product markets were the leading cause of the initial rise in inflation. However, as labor markets began to overheat in 2022, with unsustainable employment increases, a high ratio of job openings to unemployed workers, and low levels of quits, labor market tightness increasingly became the main cause of the persistently high inflation rates.
The Fed and the Biden administration managed to engineer a soft landing from that crisis. Trump came in inflicted a bunch of ridiculous policies and cut it off at the pass.
Now he’s going to lower the tariffs he put on some goods and take credit for lowering prices. I’ll be very curious to see if the American people really are as stupid as he thinks they are. (Not holding my breath.)