President Donald Trump claimed this week that he has improved the economy and that prices across the board are now lower thanks to his administration. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale conducted a detailed audit of the president's assertions and found them to be broadly inaccurate.

Speaking on Monday, Trump highlighted egg prices in particular: "These eggs, I remember eggs, eggs were like 4 or 5 times higher than they were a few years ago. There was — you couldn't get eggs. They wanted me to use plastic eggs for the Easter egg hunt because they were unable to get eggs. And I said, we'll take care of it. We got it taken care of quickly. Now, eggs are much lower than they were when we first started, and that's true with everything else."

Dale countered that this is not "true with everything else."

Eggs became a symbol of elevated grocery prices during the 2024 election cycle, as inflation was gradually descending from the peaks seen during the COVID-19 pandemic toward more typical levels. Grocery costs ranked among the top voter concerns that cycle, with exit polling consistently identifying the economy and inflation as decisive issues. However, egg prices did not decline steadily; an outbreak of H1N1, commonly known as bird flu, resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of chickens, CNN reported in January 2025.

While egg prices have since stabilized, other consumer costs have climbed sharply amid rising fuel prices and persistent inflation. Recent economic data illustrates the toll these higher prices are taking on American households, with Trump's Iran war and tariff policies continuing to draw blame.

"The president's claim that everything else is down is absolutely, unequivocally false," Dale said. "Far more products have increased in price than have decreased in price since President Trump returned to office in January of 2025."

Dale and his colleague Matt Stiles examined "332 products and product categories for which there's Consumer Price Index data online." The CPI, published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is the federal government's principal measure of price changes across goods and services and a key data point the Federal Reserve monitors when setting interest-rate policy. They found that approximately "five times as many products and categories had gone up as had gone down."

Dale noted that this is a fact-check Americans can perform themselves at the grocery store. According to his analysis, overall prices have risen 4.3 percent since Trump took office. By category, food is up 4.2 percent, housing up 4.6 percent, energy up 13.1 percent, medical services up 4.9 percent, and clothing up 4.5 percent. Childcare costs have also increased by 3.8 percent.

Dale and Stiles created an interactive bar graph organized by category, allowing users to drill down into specific items via drop-down menus. Their CNN fact-check revealed that eggs were the only item that experienced a decline of such magnitude.

"Not a single other item on this Consumer Price Index list had a decline even half as big as eggs did," their report stated. "Only about one-sixth of the items on the list declined at all (including items and categories that overlapped, such as the 'butter' item that is also included in the 'butter and margarine' category). And eggs were unique even when looking only at grocery products."

Among the items with the highest price increases were beef, coffee, and lettuce. With the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishing fresh CPI figures each month, these data provide an ongoing, verifiable benchmark for measuring consumer price trends under the current administration.