Trump said "every price" has come down
Trump claimed in 2025 that all prices had fallen. This is false. Overall consumer prices continued to rise, with groceries up about 2.1% in the year to January 2026 and beef up roughly 15%.
What we know
During 2025 Trump repeatedly claimed that prices across the economy had fallen, at times saying that "every price" had come down.
Official price data show the opposite. Overall consumer prices continued to rise. Grocery prices increased about 2.1% in the year to January 2026, and the price of beef rose by roughly 15% over a similar period. Rising prices for staple foods directly contradict a claim of universal price declines.
A general decline in all prices would be deflation, which is rare and was not occurring. Individual items can fall in price while the overall level rises, but that is very different from the sweeping claim that everything had gotten cheaper. Fact-checkers at the BBC and others rated the universal claim false.
Grocery prices are tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics through a detailed basket of specific items, which allows fact-checkers to identify exactly which goods rose or fell rather than relying only on a single blended average. The roughly 15% year-over-year increase in beef prices reported around early 2026 reflected a combination of factors independent of general monetary policy, including a multi-year contraction in the US cattle herd driven by drought conditions in cattle-producing regions, which reduced supply and pushed prices higher regardless of what was happening with overall inflation elsewhere in the economy. Egg prices had similarly spiked in earlier periods due to avian influenza outbreaks that reduced the laying hen population, another example of a price increase driven by a specific supply shock rather than broad economic conditions.
A claim that literally every price fell would require deflation across virtually every category tracked in the CPI basket simultaneously, an outcome that has occurred only briefly in US history, generally during severe recessions such as parts of 2009 and 2020, and which was not underway in the period the claim was made. Fact-checkers distinguish this sweeping, absolute language from more defensible statements that specific goods or categories became cheaper, which can be true even while the broader price level rises, and rated the universal version of the claim false specifically because it was checked against item-level data rather than a single overall index. Distinguishing between supply-driven price spikes in specific categories, like beef and eggs, and a claim about the entire economy matters because it shows household grocery bills can rise sharply even in periods when policymakers describe inflation overall as under control, which is precisely the nuance lost in a blanket statement that every price fell. Economists who study household budgets note that food and energy prices carry disproportionate weight in public perception of inflation because people purchase them frequently and notice the price at the point of sale, unlike less visible costs such as insurance premiums or housing costs that change more gradually.
Common claims
- Every price has come down.Not supported
- Groceries are cheaper than ever.Not supported