By D’Angelo Gore and Robert Farley
Several times over the last week, President Donald Trump has assured Americans that the prices of eggs and gasoline are down significantly. But he has made false claims about the cost of both products.
“Prices are going down, not going up,” Trump said in Oval Office remarks on April 22, for example. “I see that we had a couple of states where gasoline was at $1.98 a gallon. Nobody thought they’d see that for years maybe.”
Later in his remarks, he said, “And as you know, the cost of eggs has come down like 93 percent, 94 percent since we took office, and they’re pretty much normally priced now.”
As of March, the most recent data available, the average retail price of eggs was up, not down. And there are no states where the price of gasoline has dipped below $2. The national average is $3.11.
Here are the facts.
Contrary to what Trump claimed, average retail egg prices paid by consumers were still increasing last month, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data that is publicly available. In March, the nationwide average price for a dozen grade A white eggs was about $6.23 – up 5.6 percent from $5.90 in February, and up 25.7 percent from $4.95 in January.
Average grocery prices overall went up in March as well, contradicting Trump’s April 18 claim that “groceries are down,” too. The Consumer Price Index for at-home food items increased 0.49 percent from February — the last monthly decrease in the CPI was in March...
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