Trump Keeps Stacking Up Wins, New Data Shows Inflation Slowed More Than Expected

Inflation came in cooler than expected in January, and the lowest annual rate that it has been since April 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took office.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index rose 2.4 percent over the last 12 months, which is down from 2.7 percent in December.

Energy prices fell 1.5 percent in January, helping to bring the CPI to the 2.4 percent level, and rent also came in at a low 0.2 percent increase, the BLS said.

“Excluding food and energy, the core CPI was up 2.5%, the lowest level since April 2021. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for an annual rate of 2.5% for both readings,” CNBC reported.

President Donald Trump responded to the news, telling reporters, “The inflation numbers that were just announced, as you know, are way down, and we have it back on track. We had the worst in the history of our country, and now, we have very modest inflation, which is what you want to have.”

.@POTUS on the CPI report: “The inflation numbers that just announced, as you know, are way down, and we have it back on track. We had the worst in the history of our country, and now, we have very modest inflation, which is what you want to have.” pic.twitter.com/yRwDK5wDho

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 13, 2026

Fox News reported that, in addition to inflation coming in lower than expected, real wages are up 1.25 percent under Trump after falling 1.4 percent under Biden. Real wages are the measure of pay in relation to inflation. So under Trump, wage increases are outpacing the inflation rate by 1.25 percent.

🚨 HOLY CRAP! The rate of real wage growth has SURGED +189% under President Trump from Biden — this is a jaw-dropping victory

Biden: -1.4%
Trump: +1.25%

The Fake News and Experts got it wrong again. Great news for the 2026 midterms, only gets better from here! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/V40cA8oQQS

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 13, 2026

CNN’s Matt Egan celebrated the inflation news, saying, “This is some encouraging news on the cost of living. Inflation took a big step in the right direction to start the year off.”

Egan, in effect, acknowledged inflation is trending back down, even with Trump’s additional tariffs still in place, which he argued caused a slight price increase last spring.

🚨 HOLY SMOKES. CNN was just forced to report that President Trump successfully lowered annual inflation to the LOWEST in YEARS

“That’s the lowest annual inflation rate for core since March of 2021 — before the inflation crisis!”

WOW! Going back to Trump Term 1! 🔥🔥

“It’s… pic.twitter.com/2Nth2WlD3U

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) February 13, 2026

Inflation began to increase during the Biden administration shortly after he signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law in March 2021, as the economy was already well on its way to recovery.

The inflation rate was 1.4 percent when Trump left office in January 2021. It averaged 1.9 percent during his entire four years in office, among the lowest of any president going back to Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s.

The month after the America Rescue Plan was passed and hundreds of billions of borrowed and printed dollars began to flow into the economy, inflation went up to 4.2 percent and continued until it spiked at 9.1 percent in June 2022.

In a February 2021 opinion piece for The Washington Post, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers warned Democrats that passing the ARP would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability.”

After it passed the following month, Summers called it “the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years.”

Further, former Obama administration Treasury Department official Steven Rattner in a November 2021 article for The New York Times, identified the ARP as the “original sin” leading to high inflation.

He pointed to Summers’ warning, as well as “many others.”

“We worried that shoveling an unprecedented amount of spending into an economy already on the road to recovery would mean too much money chasing too few goods,” Rattner noted.

Under Trump, More Money in your Pocket💸 pic.twitter.com/Oap59iNRHA

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) February 13, 2026

The policies that Trump and the Republicans implemented with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 and the Big Beautiful Bill last summer are known as supply-side economics.

Tax cuts are used to incentivize businesses to increase their production, and therefore the supply of goods, which has a disinflationary effect.

Larry Kudlow — a former top economic adviser to presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump — argued in May 2022 as inflation spiked, “The tax hikes and the environmental restrictions [under Biden] are suppressing the supply side of the economy — not enough goods. And the spending increases the demand side of the economy — too much cash.”

“If you are going to spend more than you can produce, well, prices have to go up. And the obvious solution is to spend less and produce more,” he said.

Trump is proving once again that the best way to get inflation under control is to grow the private sector and reduce government spending.

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