The actual inflation numbers are not good for President Donald Trump and his party. So Trump found a solution of sorts: simply use fake inflation numbers.
Trump lied about inflation throughout the midterm election campaign. Among other things, he falsely stated that he had “already stopped inflation” (it accelerated further in September), that “prices are now down sharply” (they have continued to rise), and that prices are now “way down” since former President Joe Biden left office in January 2025 (they are up 5.4% on average).
But in a series of rally speeches and comments to the press this week, Trump went further by rolling out specific but false numbers to make inflation look better than it is.
In a speech in Alaska on Tuesday, Trump claimed there had only been “1.7 inflation in the last three months. Think about it, 1.7. He (Biden) had real inflation; he had 19% real inflation.” On Wednesday, more than 12 hours after new Consumer Price Index figures showed a 3.7% year-over-year inflation rate in September, Trump repeated in a rally speech in Montana: “We inherited the worst inflation in history, think about it, and now in the last three months we have 1.7 – we brought it down to – he (Biden) had 19%, his actual number is 19%.”
The numbers Trump is putting forward are so staggering that it’s hard to understand exactly what he’s talking about. The White House has so far ignored our requests for explanations.
But we can think of three possible things Trump could do here and none of them would make his claims accurate. Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said Thursday that “the 1.7% inflation figure is not supported by the data.”
For years, Trump has invented fictitious economic numbers that suit his purposes better than actual economic numbers. So it’s very possible that he’s simply lying about the year-over-year inflation rates that tend to be most often talked about – wildly exaggerating the highest rate under Biden and drastically reducing the most recent rates this year.
In the last three months of 2026 for which Consumer Price Index (CPI) data is available, the year-on-year inflation rate was well above “1.7%”: 3.7% in September, 3.4% in August, and 3.4% in July. September data is not yet available for the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index, but the index shows the year-over-year rate was 3.4% in August, 3.4% in July and 3.5% in June.
This wouldn’t be the first time he made a false claim that inflation would be “1.7%” for three months. In May, he falsely claimed that “just before the war” with Iran, “in the last three months, inflation was 1.7%.” This was also a mistake and the White House was unable to provide any justification at the time.
Culminate One-year inflation under Biden was 9.1%, as of June 2022, not “19%.” So why do we suspect that Trump is (wrongly) referring to the Biden-era inflation peak when he says Biden was at “19%”? In a 2022 speech, Trump said Biden and the Democrats had given the country 9.1% inflation, then quickly added, “It’s not 9.1%.” I think it’s double that number. »
This is not the case. The Consumer Price Index has its flaws and limitations, but there is no evidence to suggest that the “real” number is twice the actual CPI figure.
Cumulative inflation is the total increase in prices over a given period. There has been a cumulative increase of 1.1% over the past three months, according to the CPI. This is not a “1.7%” increase, so cumulative inflation does not appear to be what Trump is referring to, since he almost never uses a higher number when a lower number would be more useful to him…
…but even if he was referring to cumulative inflation, his comparison between Trump and Biden would be very misleading. Indeed, there is no reasonable way to compare three-month inflation under Trump to “19%” inflation under Biden.
The total price increase during Biden’s four-year term as president was 21.4%, according to the CPI, so “19%” is at least in the ballpark. But it would be completely absurd to compare Biden-era cumulative inflation to Biden-era cumulative inflation. 48 months with cumulative Trump-era inflation over three month.
Cumulative inflation during the Trump term to date, over 20 months, is 5.4%.
This would in no way support the “19%” figure put forward by Trump for Biden. But it’s possible that Trump’s “1.7%” figure for the past three months is an inaccurate interpretation of a fair point made this week by National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett: PCE “core” inflation, which excludes food and energy price volatility, was at an annualized rate of 2% for the three months from June to August.
This is the most generous reading of Trump’s “1.7%” figure that we can think of, but it would still mean that Trump isn’t telling the truth. He did not say in any of these comments that he was referring to core inflation rather than headline inflation; In an election in which gas prices are a major factor in overall inflation and a major contributor to voter discontent, this is a heavy omission. And 2% is not “1.7%”.
Additionally, the three-month PCE rate is expected to rise when September figures for this index are released later in October. Following the release of September CPI figures on Wednesday, the three-month core CPI jumped at an annualized rate of 3.4%, up from 2% after September data replaced June data in the calculation.
Long said the September data “changed the trend sharply. One of the main reasons the three-month annualized trend looked okay in August was the drop in gas prices in June and July.” And she said that while the reference to underlying inflation is her “best guess” as to whether Trump came up with her number, “I still can’t get to 1.7%” without removing even more price categories.
And one more thing: Biden didn’t leave Trump with the worst inflation ever
Trump declared, event after event, that he had inherited the worst inflation in US history from Biden. He did not, as CNN and others have repeatedly pointed out.
The year-over-year inflation rate was 2.9% in Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, and 3% in January 2025, the month Trump took office midway. These numbers are unremarkable by historical standards, far from record-breaking, and below the monthly rate since Trump launched a war with Iran earlier this year.
Trump could rightly claim that the year-over-year inflation peak of 9.1% under Biden was the highest in more than 40 years. But even that 9.1% rate was well below the all-time high, 23.7%, or the high point of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, 14.8%, reached in 1980. And the rate then fell significantly before Trump returned to power.
The cumulative price increase from the beginning to the end of the Biden administration has also not been the highest in U.S. history; this was less than half the cumulative inflation during Carter’s term.
CNN’s Alicia Wallace contributed to this article.
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