The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board blasted President Donald Trump’s economic policy for failing to achieve the administration’s goals of increasing real incomes and reducing inflation.
Data from the Labor Department revealed on Tuesday that inflation had surged to its highest level since February, with consumer prices rising 2.7 percent in June compared to a year earlier.
Core inflation—which takes out volatile food and energy prices and is seen as a reliable benchmark for underlying cost pressures—was also up 2.9 percent from the same time last year. Real average weekly earnings fell 0.4 percent.
The president has nevertheless insisted that his economic policies—including his aggressive tariffs on imports—is “making America wealthy again” and blasted the Federal Reserve for holding interest rates steady.
The June report “vindicates Fed chief [Jerome Powell]’s caution,” the Journal’s opinion editors wrote.
“President Trump insists there is ‘no inflation’ as he bludgeons the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. But denying inflation reality won’t make it go away,” they wrote.
Americans elected Trump to increase real incomes and reduce inflation, “yet so far, he isn’t succeeding at either,” they continued, with tariffs shouldering at least some of the blame.
The duties—which are paid by American companies, with the costs typically passed on to consumers—have already contributed to higher prices in toys, paper products, appliances, fresh food and vegetables, and other sectors that rely heavily on imports, The Wall Street Journal wrote.
“Slapping tariffs on cherries from Chile and bananas from Guatemala won’t cause more of them to be grown stateside, especially when farmers can’t find workers,” the editors wrote in an apparent dig at Trump’s mass deportation policy.
The situation is likely to get even worse as additional tariffs take effect and as duties on good begin bleeding over into the cost of services.
“Trump advisers say the President’s trade agenda is focused on helping Main Street, not Wall Street,” the opinion editors wrote. “But the irony is that the tariffs hurt Main Street while the market volatility caused by his whipsawing tariff threats has been a boon to Wall Street.”
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