US President Donald Trump has declared that he “loves inflation” as prices in the country rose at the fastest pace in three years in May, the BBC reports.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said prices rose 4.2% in May from a year earlier. The price increase was driven by rising energy costs caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Trump told reporters at the White House that he “really loves inflation” but promised that prices would fall sharply once the war in Iran was over. A few hours later, the US bombed Iran. Speaking about inflation, Trump said that US forces had carried out an operation in Iran overnight to extract millions of barrels of oil from it, which had helped to lower oil prices a little. He stressed that once the war ends, people will see oil prices return to their previous levels. Trump pointed to a trip to Iowa earlier this year, where he saw gasoline selling for 1.85 dollars a gallon, and added that fuel prices will soon return to that level.
Meanwhile, the international oil benchmark,
Brent crude, is still trading at a significantly higher price than before the war began.
The US president later claimed to the New York Post that his remarks were taken out of context, and that he meant by that that inflation was much lower than would be expected given the situation.
The 10th of June marked the third consecutive month that the US Consumer Price Index has risen, as households increasingly feel the burden of the US-Israeli war with Iran. For now, however, inflation remains well below its peak of 9.1% in mid-2022. True, inflation remains a political issue for Trump, given that voters have ranked the economy among the most important issues ahead of the November midterm elections.
Energy bills, including gas and electricity, were a quarter higher in May than a year earlier, with the increase largely driven by rising fuel prices. The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is now 4.15 dollars, according to data from the monitoring group AAA, a significant increase from 2.98 dollars a gallon on the 28th of February, when Trump launched strikes on Iran. In response, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit route for about a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas.
The BLS data also shows rising airfares, and higher costs for medical care, recreation and communications.
Economists have warned that even if the war ends soon, it could take until 2027 for normal traffic to return to normal through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump, who campaigned in 2024 to make curbing inflation a top priority, has been criticized by his opponents for his comments this week. He also faced criticism for his comments in May that he did not care about the financial health of Americans when it came to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
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