Donald Trump's favored inflation gauge? Bacon.
Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images
- Donald Trump pointed to the rising cost of bacon as evidence for inflation.
- "Bacon is up five times… food is up horribly, worse than energy," he told NBC Sunday.
- Sliced bacon prices have actually only risen by about 12% since Trump left office.
Inflation tends to hurt the poor more than the rich – but don't tell that to billionaire fast food lover Donald Trump, who on Sunday flagged the soaring price of one item in particular.
In a wide-ranging interview with NBC's "Meet the Press", the former president pointed to the rising cost of bacon as evidence of the inflationary pressures squeezing the US economy right now.
"Things are not going, right now, very well for the consumer," Trump told moderator Kristen Welker, as part of an 80-minute pre-recorded interview.
"Bacon is up five times… food is up horribly, worse than energy," he added.
Trump is – not for the first time – misstating the facts here.
He's correct that food prices are now rising at a faster rate than energy costs, but the statement that bacon has become five times more expensive is wildly inaccurate.
The average price of a pound of sliced bacon has climbed about 12% since Trump left office in January 2021, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics – but actually fallen over the past year, with inflation now cooling toward the Federal Reserve's 2% target.
So, Joe Biden's presidency hasn't been as bad for lovers of salt-cured pork as his predecessor might have you think.
It might seem bizarre that Trump, who remains the favorite to become the Republican party's presidential nominee, would flag the cost of bacon as a potential inflation gauge.
But food prices do often make for interesting reading for economists.
For the past 37 years, The Economist's Big Mac Index has tracked the price of the flagship McDonald's hamburger as an informal way of working out the purchasing power of different currencies.
Meanwhile, since May 2021 Bloomberg has published its Pret Index, which uses footfall in Pret A Mangers in the London and New York financial districts to assess the rate at which bankers, asset managers, and lawyers are coming into the office.
Perhaps the Donald Trump Bacon Index will one day join those two in the pantheon of great food-based economic metrics.