WP: Trump’s policies are working together to hike prices, as midterms approach

President Donald Trump promised to bring inflation down. Yet he keeps doing things that push prices up, ‘The Washington Post’ notes.

The war on Iran is Exhibit A. When Iranian authorities retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a global energy lifeline, the price of gasoline jumped more than 50 percent from pre-war levels. Consumers are now paying an average of $4.51 per gallon, according to AAA.

Higher energy costs are also spreading through the economy, driving up the price of airfares and goods that move by truck, including groceries. On Wednesday, the government said wholesale prices rose in April at their fastest pace in more than three years.

Consumer prices in April were up 3.8 percent over the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On Tuesday, the president told reporters that current inflation is “just short-term,” echoing his predecessor’s ill-considered insistence in 2022 that rising prices were “transitory.”

Once the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, energy shipments will quickly resume and prices will fall, said Kush Desai, a White House spokesman. Wages were growing faster than inflation until the war intervened, he added.

To be sure, Trump’s policies also are intended to deliver long-run benefits, such as preventing Iran’s theocratic regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon and reindustrializing the United States.

But during the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden, and his replacement as the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, for mishandling cost-of-living issues. Less than a month before Election Day, Trump vowed to deliver gas prices that would be “50 percent cheaper,” or roughly $1.60 per gallon, based on then-current pump prices.

On Election Day, Trump won 76 percent of voters who said that inflation had caused their family severe hardship, according to a CNN exit poll.

Now the president has become dismissive of such concerns. Earlier this month, he told supporters that the affordability issue was “a line of bullshit” pushed by Democrats for partisan advantage.

Voters disagree. In a CNN poll this month, 77 percent of Americans surveyed said Trump’s policies had increased the cost of living; only 8 percent said they had reduced it. With midterm congressional elections less than six months away, Republicans in and around the White House are growing anxious.

“We’re going to have to deal with the higher baseline level of gasoline prices over the course of the year. Remember that we went into the year with gas prices below $3.00, right? There’s no scenario where that’s happening,” said Dutta, the Renaissance Macro economist.

But few outside the White House expect rapid improvement…