Trump: Cutting food assistance in budget bill "is going to give everybody much more food because prices are..."

[progree]

27. Not true on energy's down. While groceries was down 0.4% in April, its up (slightly) over the last 3 months

Last edited Wed May 21, 2025, 07:26 AM - Edit history (1)

And food away from home is up a hefty amount (see below)

Tuesday May 13
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-calls-fed-cut-rates-175540927.html

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday repeated his call for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, saying prices for gas, groceries and "practically everything else" are down.

"No Inflation, and Prices of Gasoline, Energy, Groceries, and practically everything else, are DOWN!!! THE FED must lower the RATE, like Europe and China have done," Trump said on Truth Social.

Not true - see graphs below and the LBN CPI OP at https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143458249. Prices overall were up 0.2% from March to April.
One can see the components month-by-month increases and annual increase in the Table A at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm

Gasoline declined 0.1% but energy overall is up 0.7% in April. It's true that groceries are down 0.4% (after a 0% increase in February and a 0.5% increase in March, so the 3 month average is slightly up). Food away from home is up 0.4% each month for the past 3 months.

"Practically everything else" is up.

The CPI rise averaged 1.6% over the past 3 months on an annualized basis (core CPI: 2.1%)
The April one month increase annualized is: CPI: 2.7%, (core CPI: 2.9%)

News report from the source: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
CPI data series: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0
CORE CPI data series: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0L1E

I annualize everything to be comparable to each other and to compare to the Fed's 2% target

They are calculated using the actual index values, not from the rounded off monthly change numbers.
REGULAR CPI


CORE CPI


Both the CPI and Core CPI 3 month rolling average were helped a lot when the huge January increases dropped out of the 3-month window.

The rolling 12 months averages graphs are in the OP. They were helped by last year's big April 2024 month-over-month increases dropping out of the 12 month window. What drops out of the window is just as important as what enters the 12 month window (which is the latest).

Next month, the rolling 12 month average will not be helped by the "drop out" effect because May 2024 month-over-month increases that are dropping out of the 12 month windows are small: just 0.5% ANNUALIZED for the CPI, and 1.7% ANNUALIZED for the core CPI.