As President Trump seeks to reframe his message on affordability, he is increasingly denying there is a problem at all.
Speaking at a gathering of McDonald’s franchise owners and operators in Washington, Mr. Trump boasted that he had “normalized” inflation, slashed regulations like water restrictions that helped small businesses, and brought down energy costs. But after being dogged for weeks on Americans’ frustration with the high cost of living, the president gave no details about how he planned to address the issue.
“This is also the golden age of America, because we are doing better than we’ve ever done as a country,” Mr. Trump said. “Prices are coming down and all of that stuff.”
With prices for ground beef approaching $10 per pound, the president’s attempt to wave away cost concerns may fall flat for low- and middle-income Americans, many of whom are struggling to afford fast food, including the Big Macs that Mr. Trump favors.
Mr. Trump’s address comes as his administration has scrambled to devise a plan to address the issue of affordability after a wave of Democratic victories in elections earlier this month revealed a key policy vulnerability. Since the election, Mr. Trump and his cabinet have sought to wrest back the message of affordability from Democrats and tackle high prices that Mr. Trump declared he would drive down in his first days in office.
Mr. Trump has vacillated between blaming his predecessor for the affordability problem and claiming that there was not one at all. “The Biden administration started the affordability crisis, and my administration is ending it,” he said on Monday.
In recent weeks, the administration has proposed a series of scattered promises and policy proposals to address affordability, including walking back some of his most aggressive levies. Mr. Trump has also floated issuing $2,000 checks from the tariffs he has levied on other countries that is, in part, driving up costs. (Mr. Trump has also been loath to acknowledge that his tariffs are driving up prices).
The administration announced last week that it would lift tariffs on foreign products, including beef, tomatoes, bananas and coffee, expanding an effort to alleviate some of the price pains consumers have experienced since Mr. Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs on other countries in the spring.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump said his team was still working to come up with new ways to bring down costs. “We worked on it this weekend,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “And you’re going to see some of the items that were a little bit higher — they were lower than the last administration but a little bit higher — we’re going to have some little price reductions and, in some cases, some pretty good ones.”
The administration has struggled to contend with beef prices in particular — which have been soaring since Mr. Trump took office. Last month, he said that he was considering easing import restrictions on beef from Argentina, a policy that angered cattle ranchers because it was at odds with his “America First” philosophy.
To mitigate the fallout, Mr. Trump declared that something “fishy” was going on with meat prices — that American cattle ranchers were being unfairly blamed for — and he ordered the Justice Department to investigate meat companies that he said were driving up prices through “collusion.” Over the weekend, his Treasury secretary tried to blame migrants, who he said were bringing sick cows across the border.
In his remarks at the summit, Mr. Trump made only fleeting reference to the issue of beef prices — after boasting about getting his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to eat a Big Mac.
“Despite hamburgers being a big business, energy is one business that’s bigger — when you get energy down, everything else is affected,” he said.
During the nearly hourlong address, at an event billed as the McDonald’s Impact Summit, Mr. Trump took shots at numerous political opponents, told elaborate stories about the military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and renaming the Gulf of Mexico, and talked about his appearance at a McDonald’s drive-through window on the campaign trail.
Mr. Trump did address one policy issue probably on the minds of some fast-food restaurant operators, a rise in the minimum wage in blue states. “The minimum wage thing you’ll have to be talking about, you’re going to have to fight,” he said of increases in California.
The president praised McDonald’s for lowering its prices and bringing more affordable options to its menu, even if he did not say why.
In September, the company announced an expansion of its value meals to help more customers. McDonald’s chief executive, Chris Kempczinski, said then in an interview with CNBC that the company had noticed that middle- and lower-income customers were struggling as a “two-tier economy” emerged.
Michael R. Strain, the director of economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said that Mr. Trump’s contradictory statements on the issue had complicated his efforts to convince Americans that he was working toward a solution.
“There is a really great irony here, which is that President Biden made some policy mistakes that led to a big increase in prices, and if it wasn’t for that, President Trump might not be president again,” he said. “And here we are with President Trump making some substantial policy errors that are leading to higher prices.”
Mr. Strain noted that for all the blame Mr. Trump has tried to deflect to his predecessor, their strategies were strikingly similar. They both have avoided facing the reality that price increases were angering the American public, he said, and both sought to blame corporations.
“I thought I was one of the few people who thought that what President Biden was doing was crazy,” he added. “But after having lived through that, it’s crazy to see another president make the same mistake.”
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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