Here’s How Inflation and Prices Have Compared Under Trump vs. Biden

Woman buys eggs in the supermarket

No president directly controls the inflation rate or the cost of goods and services, but fair or not, the Oval Office’s occupant gets credit when prices fall and blame when they rise.

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The yearslong trend of modest inflation was well-established when Donald Trump took office in January 2017, and many of the pandemic-driven building blocks for soaring prices were already in place when President Joe Biden took over in January 2021.

However, when eliminating the context and looking purely at numbers during each president’s four-year term, Trump oversaw a period of relatively low inflation, and Biden’s term so far has largely been defined by rapidly rising prices and the most painful inflation since the early 1980s.

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Inflation vs. Wage Growth

Inflation doesn’t hurt as much if incomes grow faster than prices rise, which they did during Trump’s entire presidency. According to a Vox analysis, the inflation rate was always under 3% and sometimes under 2% during all four Trump years before cratering to near zero during the peak pandemic, with wage growth outpacing inflation throughout.

Inflation began surpassing income growth just as Biden took office in 2021 and never stopped until the start of 2023. That held true even though wages rose faster under Biden than during Trump’s time in office. Wage growth has since slowed, but the inflation rate has fallen faster, allowing income gains to keep up with rising prices from early 2023 through today.

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A Gallon of Gas

According to a May 2 analysis from Yahoo Finance senior columnist Rick Newman, the average gas price was $2.47 per gallon when Trump took office in January 2017. The average for his entire four-year term was $2.57, or $2.67 if you omit the peak-COVID era from his last 10 months in office when nearly nonexistent demand sent prices crashing.

Conversely, the average price per gallon during Biden’s presidency so far is $3.61 — 40% more than even Trump’s higher average. Gas peaked at over $5 for the first time ever in June 2022.

When adjusted for inflation, Trump’s average is $3.18 in 2024 dollars, 21% less than Biden’s inflation-adjusted price of $3.86.

A Dozen Eggs

According to the St. Louis Fed, a dozen large, Grade A eggs cost about $1.60 when Trump took office in January 2017. During his single term, the price breached the $2 mark only twice, and briefly both times — $2.08 in April 2018 and $2.02 two years later in April 2020. Trump’s price hit a low of $1.22 in August 2019.

When Biden took office in January 2021, a dozen eggs cost $1.47. In February 2022, it rose to $2 and has never receded below that mark since. By the start of August 2022, a dozen eggs cost $3, then $4 by December 2022 before peaking at an all-time high of $4.82 in January 2023. The previous record was $2.97 in September 2015.

The cheapest price under President Biden so far was $2.04 in August 2023, but that has since risen to about $3 today.

A Gallon of Milk

According to the St. Louis Fed, a gallon of whole milk cost $3.32 when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017. The price fell steadily to a term-low of $2.84 in July 2018. The price held steady until it breached $3 in June 2019 and climbed to a Trump-era high of $3.54 in December 2020.

The price of milk fell briefly and modestly during Biden’s first three months, then started on an upward trajectory that peaked at $4.22 in November 2022. The average price of a gallon of milk has since fallen, but only to its current cost of about $3.90.

Airfare

The average plane ticket was already relatively affordable during Trump’s pre-pandemic term. Federal Reserve data shows that for most of his first three years, the average price was around $260. It had previously spent much of the 2010s in the low-$300s.

Then, at the end of February 2020, COVID hit, the skies emptied and the average price of an airline ticket fell off a cliff and bottomed out at $186 in May 2020.

By the time Biden took office, the price was back up to $212. After several fits and starts, the travel industry recovered, prices started rising, and the average cost of airfare topped out at $319 in June 2022. It has since fallen to about $270.

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