American Consumer Prices Climb on Trump’s Watch….

Inflation heated up more than expected in January, as prices for groceries, housing and energy all picked up for Americans in early 2025, potentially complicating President Trump’s agenda.

A key gauge of inflation — the consumer price index — showed Wednesday morning that prices rose by 3.0 percent in January from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department. That’s hotter than the 2.9 percent annual gain reported in December, underscoring economic concerns of Americans who voted out incumbents in federal elections last fall.

Stripping out volatile food and energy categories, so-called core inflation was also higher, growing by 3.3 percent for the year ending in January….

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Trump’s wishes/Ducking/EXCUSES…..

President Trump promised voters that, if elected, he would enact policies that would bring prices down on “Day 1” in office.

But three weeks into his term, Mr. Trump and White House officials have become more measured in how they discuss their efforts to tame inflation. They have begun downplaying the likelihood that consumer costs like groceries will decline anytime soon, reflecting the limited power that presidents have to control prices. Those are largely determined by global economic forces.

The shifting tone could allow Mr. Trump to reset expectations about how fast prices will come down as he pursues policies like tariffs and tax cuts, which economists say could exacerbate inflation.

Mr. Trump and his advisers believe that expanding American energy production and rolling back regulations will reduce costs. They also argue that some of Mr. Trump’s tax proposals, such as eliminating taxes on overtime, would curb inflation by giving workers more incentives to work longer hours, therefore expanding the labor force.

But in an interview this week, Mr. Trump demurred when pressed about when families struggling with high prices would start to feel some relief. He suggested that his policies would make America a rich country, which would reduce the burden on consumers by, in theory, increasing their earnings.

“I think we’re going to become a rich — look, we’re not that rich right now,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News. “We owe $36 trillion. That’s because we let all these nations take advantage of us.”

At a news briefing last week, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump was doing everything possible to alleviate the nation’s cost-of-living crisis. But when asked at what point Americans would begin to experience relief from high consumer prices, she said, “I don’t have a timeline.”

Vice President JD Vance has also tempered expectations that consumer prices will be dropping anytime soon.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Mr. Vance told CBS News last month, explaining that “it’s going to take a little bit of time” for grocery prices to decline…..

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