In June of 2022, the United States recorded 9.1 percent inflation — the highest 12-month price increase since November 1981. That number belongs to Joe Biden. It is the economic legacy of his energy policies, his spending policies, and his “transitory” dismissal of the inflation warning signs that economists were raising a full year before the peak.
In January of 2026, inflation is running at 2.4 percent. That number belongs to Donald Trump.
This is the most powerful economic comparison in American politics right now — and it is being dramatically under-deployed by every Republican who should be making it.
Let’s put it in terms that matter to a family trying to understand their grocery bill. At 9.1 percent annual inflation, a family spending $1,000 a month on groceries in June 2021 was paying $182 more per month by June 2022 — not because they bought more, but because everything cost more. Energy, food, housing, transportation — all moving up simultaneously at the fastest rate in four decades. The average American family lost roughly $7,400 in annual purchasing power at Biden’s inflation peak, according to multiple economic analyses.
At 2.4 percent — the current rate under Trump — that same $1,000 grocery budget grows by $24 a month. Manageable. Expected. Not the economic suffocation of 2022.
The comparison gets sharper when you look at averages. Biden’s four years averaged roughly 5 percent annual inflation — more than double the historical norm and more than double what the Federal Reserve targets. Trump’s first year back is running at a fraction of that.
Here is why this comparison is so politically potent: Democrats spent three years telling Americans that the 9.1 percent inflation was not Biden’s fault. It was COVID. It was supply chains. It was Putin. It was corporate greed. It was everything except the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that pumped demand into an economy that couldn’t meet it.
Those same Democrats are now telling voters that Trump’s economic stewardship is dangerous. They are running midterm campaigns on economic anxiety while hoping voters don’t remember what economic anxiety actually felt like in 2022.
The Republican response to every Democratic economic attack in 2026 should be the same: 9.1 percent versus 2.4 percent. Say it clearly. Say it every time. Let voters do the math.
The Iran war has pushed gas prices up roughly 48 cents a gallon since the operation began — real pain, real fast, and real visible at every fuel pump in America. Democrats are already building midterm ads around those gas prices. The counter-argument is not to deny the pain. It is to put it in context.
Gas prices went up 48 cents because of a war. Grocery prices went up 9.1 percent because of Democratic economic policy. One of those things ends when the Strait of Hormuz reopens. The other baked itself into the cost of living for three years running.
American voters are not economists. But they remember what 2022 felt like. They remember when their grocery bill jumped every week and their paycheck didn’t keep up. Republicans who remind them of that comparison — clearly, repeatedly, and with the numbers — have an economic argument that survives the Iran war news cycle.
9.1 percent. 2.4 percent. Learn both numbers. Use both numbers. The midterms depend on voters knowing the difference.