LARRY KUDLOW: Trump’s strong growth at low inflation should put the fake news to rest

President Donald Trump has no excuses for low inflation, affordability, or anything about the economy. His first-term record of strong growth and modest inflation was much better than Joe Biden’s initially. And now, because of some individual food prices, Democrats and the left-wing media are somehow trying to paint Trump as inflationary.

Here are just a few numbers. Mr. Trump has been in office for 8 months from the CPI reports. Grocery prices rose at an annual rate of 2.1%. That’s it. Now some prices, such as beef and eggs, rise temporarily, but then fall with policy adjustments. Meanwhile, a host of other grocery prices will fall on their own. It’s the nature of indices, if you pay more for one thing, you’ll pay less for another. When Joe Biden was president, grocery prices rose at an annual rate of 5.4% per year. Cumulatively, they rose by 23%.

As for Mr. Trump’s eight months? Its cumulative jump in grocery prices was 1.4%. That’s why I say he has nothing to apologize for. At the same time, typical family wages for workers rose by more than 4%. That’s double the average grocery prices under Trump. It even significantly exceeds the overall inflation rate of 2.5% annually. So let me get this straight, grocery prices have exploded under Biden. Overall grocery prices have barely moved under Trump, despite some outliers like beef and eggs.

Wages are rising faster than prices under Trump. But when grocery prices rose 23% under Biden, prices rose about $3,300 above wages. So real wages collapsed under Biden because prices were higher than wages. Now Trump has reversed this with a third improvement in wages above prices. But it’s just the beginning. Indeed, his program of tax cuts, deregulation, and reciprocal free trade is already working.

Supply-side growth with low inflation is the key to affordability and prosperity and frankly the key to a hundred other good things.

In the first quarter, which ended in June, GDP rose at a 3.8% annual rate. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta now expects Mr. Trump’s second quarter ending in September to rise at a 4.1% annual rate. These are big numbers.

That’s why Democrats shut down the government for the longest period in history, because they were intent on sabotaging Mr. Trump’s successes. By the way, the audience didn’t like it at all. Not a little. As it turned out, approval of the Republican Party’s position was better than approval of the Democratic Party by more than 10 percentage points.