New federal data underscores what many Americans already feel at the checkout counter: prices have climbed dramatically since 2020, and the bulk of that increase happened during the Biden administration. But the numbers also suggest the current administration hasn’t fully reversed the trend.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), an item that cost $40 in July 2020 averaged $51.55 in July 2026. In percentage terms, something that cost $100 in 2020 now costs $128.88 on average. That six-year increase actually exceeds the cumulative price rise over the 14 years from 2006 to 2020, when $100 in 2006 dollars grew to $127.32 by July 2020.
“After years of having prices slowly creep upward, they have shot upward since 2020,” wrote The Federalist, which analyzed the BLS data.
Biden-Era Inflation in Focus
The bulk of the price increases since 2020 occurred during Joe Biden’s presidency. When Biden took office, the annual inflation rate stood at 1.4 percent. Within 18 months it peaked at 9.1 percent. Over his full four-year term, the average annual inflation rate hit 5 percent — the highest of any presidential term in 45 years, according to the BLS’s consumer price index for all urban consumers.
Put another way: $100 at the start of Biden’s term was worth just $82.34 by the time he left office four years later. The last time Americans saw the value of their money drop that sharply over a four-year span was under Jimmy Carter.
Economists and policy analysts point to two main culprits for the Biden-era inflation: Covid lockdown policies that disrupted supply chains and put many smaller companies out of business, and runaway federal spending that flooded the economy with excess dollars. As financial writer John Steele Gordon put it, “As the price of money falls, the price of every other commodity must go up.”
The Spending Spree
The federal government had never spent $4.5 trillion in a single year before 2020, according to federal budget tables. Then it spent more than $6.5 trillion in 2020 — breaking the prior record by more than $2 trillion — and followed that with $6.8 trillion in 2021. Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act alone added roughly $1 trillion to 2021 spending, per the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
In constant 2017 dollars, the government racked up $5.5 trillion in deficit spending in 2020 and 2021 combined — more than it had across the 43 combined fiscal years from 1947 through 1989.
The spending hasn’t stopped. Since 2021, the government has never spent less than $6.1 trillion in a single year, and at least $1.3 trillion of that has been borrowed money each year. The national debt is approaching $40 trillion, and the CBO projects that more than $1 trillion of this year’s tax revenue will go just to paying interest on the debt — more than discretionary defense spending ($885 billion) or discretionary non-defense spending (just under $1 trillion).
“Huge chunks of Americans’ tax dollars are buying nothing tangible,” The Federalist noted. “They’re just the bill due for prior irresponsible deficit spending.”
Trump’s Record So Far
Inflation during President Trump’s second term has been mostly under 3 percent, with only one month above 4 percent (4.2 percent in May of this year). Even that worst month was less than half of Biden’s 9.1 percent peak and below Biden’s 5 percent average. Under Biden, Americans endured 21 consecutive months of inflation above 5 percent; under Trump, inflation has never hit that mark in either of his terms.
Still, the trend is not entirely favorable. In the first 13 months of Trump’s second term, inflation averaged 2.6 percent. Over the past five months, it has averaged 3.6 percent. The most recent figure, for July, was 3.4 percent — slightly higher than the 3.0 percent rate when Trump took office.
The Federalist attributes part of the recent uptick to the “undeclared war with Iran” that began under Trump, suggesting that geopolitical instability may have contributed to rising prices.
What Needs to Happen Next
To bring costs back under control, the article argues, the government must reverse the very policies that fueled inflation under Biden. That means reining in deficit spending, especially “auto-pilot” spending — mandatory outlays plus net interest on the debt — which now consumes an astonishing 99 percent of tax revenue. Only 1 percent of tax revenue remains for discretionary spending, meaning nearly all of it is funded with borrowed money.
The article also calls for encouraging free-market competition and reversing corporate consolidation. It points to Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker, who recently argued that the economy suffers from “oligopoly-level industrial concentration in almost every sector,” “cronyism,” and hyper-regulation. Baker said the problem is a “capitalism that has mutated into a system run by and for large corporate interests,” with power concentrated among a “business-political class” that promotes its own well-being at the expense of competition and ordinary people.
The Federalist concludes that “the consolidation and centralization of money and power is the enemy of a free economy and a free people.” The path forward, it argues, lies in embracing economic freedom and decentralized control.
Source: thefederalist.com — https://thefederalist.com/2026/08/18/blame-mostly-biden-for-high-prices-1/