Editorial: White House making progress on higher prices

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Feb 16, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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U.S. consumers received good news Friday when the Department of Labor reported that inflation slowed in January. Continued progress on prices will benefit American families and help the GOP blunt Democratic attacks on “affordability.”

Prices rose by 2.4 percent last month when compared with the first month of 2025. That’s an improvement from the December year-to-year increase of 2.7 percent. Lower costs for housing, food and energy contributed to the progress. “Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, fell to 2.5 percent, its lowest point since March 2021,” Investors Business Daily reported.

“This is great news on inflation,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told CNBC. “Inflation fell to the lowest level since May, and key items such as food, gas and rent are cooling off. This will provide much-needed relief for middle-class and moderate-income families.”

The numbers indicate that the Trump administration has made headway on minimizing price shocks. While tariffs certainly create cost pressures, they have yet to trigger the type of consumer pain that many economists feared — in part, because they have been offset by Republican tax cuts and regulatory reform. The January employment numbers were also encouraging, as the jobless rate fell to 4.3 percent, and employers hired at a robust pace. Gasoline prices are down over the past year.

Still, there is more to be done. A New York Times and Siena University poll from Jan. 22 revealed that the economy tops the list of voter concerns, with 51 percent or respondents blaming President Donald Trump’s policies for making their lives less affordable. The White House would be wise not to dismiss that as purely partisan.

That said, perspective is in order, particularly for Democrats cynically exploiting public unease over the economy even as they previously presided over the hottest inflation in four decades. Over the first full year of Trump’s second term, inflation has hovered at around 3 percent or lower each month. Compare that with Joe Biden’s tenure, when prices began to soar within months of his inauguration before inflation hit an astronomical 9.1 percent in June 2022, remaining well above 4 percent for the next year.

Meanwhile, average gasoline prices under Biden leaped above $5 at one point. A gallon of gasoline was cheaper during all four years of Trump’s first term than at any time during the Biden administration’s tenure, according to Forbes.

None of this should be shocking. All the chatter about “affordability” from congressional Democrats is an effort to deflect from that fact that their party’s massive spending blowouts and open hostility to traditional energy producers during the Biden years created financial hardships that the American public had not endured for nearly 40 years. To the extent that Republicans and Trump promote economic policies that unleash the creative forces of the private sector, boosting growth and job creation, they’ll be in a good spot to emphasize that distinction.