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Photo: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group

As you are undoubtedly aware, Donald Trump remains in the news every waking moment. He’s a font of menacing Truth Social posts, incoherent speeches, unorthodox diplomatic interventions, impromptu media appearances, and near-constant proclamations and executive orders. Similarly, Trump’s White House is ever active, with notable omnipresence from his immigrant-hating domestic-policy chief, Stephen Miller, and his government-hating budget director, Russell Vought. This is not an administration that hides its light under a bushel. It’s executing a mass-deportation program that is designed to use cruelty and randomness in order to frighten legal as well as illegal immigrants into self-deporting. It’s testing the boundaries of traditional American strictures against the domestic use of the military. It’s bending law enforcement to the pursuit of Trump enemies and of Trump opponents generally. It’s trying to rig the 2026 midterms. It’s feeding the president’s limitless ego with prospects of Nobel Peace Prizes.

But at some point all the things Team Trump is doing will draw attention to what it is conspicuously failing to do. And there should be a red warning sign to the White House in this report from The Wall Street Journal on rising grocery prices:

Over the 12 months ended in August, the price of coffee increased 20.9%, Labor Department data showed; ground beef was up 12.8%, and bananas rose 6.6%. Dairy, fruits and vegetables and cereals have all become pricier.

Ground-roast coffee in August hit $8.87 a pound on average, jumping nearly $1 since May. Ground-beef prices added about 30 cents over that period, rising to a record $6.32 a pound, and steaks were up by more than $1 a pound.

Rising commodity prices are driving some of the increases, including American beef. Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have separately raised the cost of importing a variety of goods, from Spanish olive oil to Guatemalan bananas to shrimp from Vietnam. Some of these costs have been absorbed by food companies; others are being passed on to consumers.

The government shutdown has delayed September inflation numbers, but anecdotally it seems grocery prices are continuing to rise. And it’s entirely possible that the impact of Trump’s tariffs has been masked by temporary measures that partially insulated consumers. That could mean bigger grocery-price shocks down the road, particularly if the president’s trade war goes poorly.

The political peril should be obvious. By most accounts, concerns about inflation were a very significant factor in Trump’s victory over Joe Biden last year. And Trump’s campaign promised not just an abatement of inflation but lower prices on an array of goods and services.

Disappointment with his record on this issue is pretty clear in poll assessments of Trump’s performance as president this year. According to Silver Bulletin’s polling averages, the president’s net-approval ratings for “handling inflation” went underwater in February and really dropped after he announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April. Now his net approval on this issue stands at minus 27.2 percent, far below his overall net job approval of 8 percent.

You can make a case that Trump is actually doing some things that could lower prices before long. His drill-baby-drill energy policies are intended to hold down gasoline prices, which are a bit lower than they were a year ago. His crusade to force the Fed to cut interest rates is partially motivated by hopes that it would reduce the overall cost of housing purchases. And Trump’s rather crude efforts to push down prescription-drug prices could bear fruit. But other policies he’s pushing (not only tariffs, but cuts in federal health-care benefits) could push living costs higher. And overall, he’s giving the impression that other priorities matter to him a lot more.

Clearly, some 2024 swing voters didn’t much care whether Trump had some authoritarian tendencies if he’d deal with inflation and limit the number of migrants crossing the southern border. The question is whether these same voters will reward his party in the midterms now that his authoritarian regime isn’t delivering on grocery prices, is distracted by foreign affairs, and has launched a wild mass-deportation program that goes far beyond “border control.” It’s a good guess that more than a few would trade any prospective Trump Nobel Prize for an affordable pound of coffee and a little less self-congratulatory presidential rhetoric.

Grocery Prices Are Rising. Trump’s Focused on Everything Else.

Grocery Prices Are Rising. Trump’s Focused on Everything Else.