Fact check: Trump falsely claims the inflation rate was just 1.7% prior to the Iran war

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — After newly released Consumer Price Index figures showed that the year-over-year inflation rate was 3.8% in April, the highest in nearly three years, President Donald Trump tried to reassure Americans about rising prices – in part by falsely claiming the inflation rate was just 1.7% prior to the war with Iran.

“If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7%,” Trump said Tuesday. Later in his comments to reporters, he said that “if you go from before, just before the war, we were, for the last three months, 1.7%, and now what you have is – as soon as this war is over, you’re going to see inflation go down to probably 1.5%.”

In reality, the inflation rate was not 1.7% in any of the three months before the war.

The year-over-year increase in the Consumer Price Index was 2.7% in November 2025, 2.7% in December 2025 and 2.4% in January 2026. The rate was 2.4% again in February 2026, for which nearly all the data was collected before the war that began on the last day of the month. It has not been as low as 1.7% since early 2021, amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, also wasn’t at 1.7% in any of these pre-war months. It was 2.8% in November 2025, 2.9% in both of December 2025 and January 2026, and 2.8% in February 2026. It jumped to 3.5% in March 2026; the April 2026 data hasn’t been released yet.

Trump has often spoken of core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rather than overall inflation. But he didn’t do so this time, and, regardless, core inflation was at least 2.5% in the Consumer Price Index and 2.8% in the Personal Consumption Expenditures index in each month from November 2025 through February 2026.

Asked for comment Tuesday on Trump’s “1.7%” claim, White House spokesperson Kush Desai responded with a tactic that has become common from Trump’s team: ignoring the specific question about the inaccurate figure but nonetheless declaring Trump “right.”

“President Trump is right: inflation was cool and stable prior to Operation Epic Fury,” Desai said. “The President has always been clear about temporary disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and how energy prices and inflation will quickly drop once the Iranian nuclear threat is neutralized and the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened.”

Trump’s claims about Biden-era inflation

After defending the Iran war, Trump also claimed Tuesday: “Now, with all of this, inflation is much lower than it was under Biden. Biden had the highest inflation in the history of our country. Inflation is nothing by comparison.”

But Trump was wrong that Biden had the highest inflation in US history, as CNN and others have repeatedly noted when Trump has made this claim in the past. Peak inflation under Biden, 9.1% in June 2022, was the highest in more than 40 years, since November 1981 – but it was far from the all-time high of 23.7%, which was reached in 1920, or even the highest point of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, 14.8%, which was reached in 1980.

The accuracy of Trump’s claim “inflation is much lower than it was under Biden” depends on how you define “under Biden.”

Working against Trump’s claim: The current 3.8% Consumer Price Index inflation rate is higher than the rate was in each of Biden’s last 20 months in office including January 2025, the month Trump took over. The rate was 3.0% in January 2025 and 2.9% in December 2024, Biden’s final full month in the White House.

Working in favor of Trump’s claim: The current 3.8% rate is less than half of that Biden-era 9.1% peak. It’s also lower than the rate in 26 of Biden’s 48 months as president through January 2025, including the entirety of 2022. And the cumulative increase in consumer prices in Trump’s second term through April 2026, 4.8%, is less than half of the cumulative increase, 10.5%, over the equivalent period of Biden’s presidency through April 2022.

There are major differences in circumstances, of course. Biden inherited a global pandemic and then faced the fallout from Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, while the current jump in inflation under Trump has been triggered by a war he chose to launch.

The-CNN-Wire
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