Senators Andy Kim and Elizabeth Warren are drawing attention to household costs ahead of the midterm elections, sharing a graphic that describes the increases as a “Trump Tax.”
Kim shared Warren’s visual on X. It lists groceries, electricity, child care, gas, rent and health care, and says the average family is paying $3,338 more. The figure needs its own methodology: the graphic does not specify the period, household spending assumptions and calculation behind that total.
Newsweek has contacted Warren and Kim, the White House, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the Bureau of Labor Statistics for comment.
The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data offers a way to compare price changes across the six categories. In September, overall consumer prices were 3.7 percent higher than a year earlier. Gasoline rose much faster than several other categories. The Consumer Price Index tracks price changes; it does not, by itself, identify which administration or policy caused them.
What the Latest Data Shows
The BLS reported these year-over-year changes through September:
- Groceries: The food-at-home index rose 1.8 percent.
- Electricity: Prices rose 4.4 percent.
- Child care: The day care and preschool index rose 3.1 percent.
- Gas: Gasoline prices rose 34.2 percent.
- Rent: Rent of primary residence rose 2.8 percent.
- Health care: The medical care index rose 1.5 percent.
Gasoline was the clear outlier, its index rose 34.2 percent over the year, while grocery prices increased 1.8 percent. The BLS also reported that the food-at-home index fell 0.1 percent in September from the previous month.
These figures are percentage changes in price indexes, not the dollar amount a particular household paid. They also cover different types of spending. The BLS medical care index, for example, does not represent every family’s combined spending on health insurance, deductibles, and medical care.
The BLS publishes average retail prices for selected foods, utilities and fuels, but cautions that those estimates can reflect changes in the products and outlets sampled. Its CPI indexes are designed to measure price change over time.
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What the $3,338 Figure Includes
The ITEP analysis linked with the post is a separate calculation. Its October 8 report estimates the combined effects of new tax provisions in the 2025 budget law, price increases above what the Congressional Budget Office had projected before Trump took office, and the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits. ITEP estimates those combined effects equal 2.7 percent of income for the middle fifth of Americans and 5.7 percent for the poorest fifth.
That is not a straightforward sum of price increases across the six categories in Warren’s graphic. The report incorporates policy and tax-credit effects as well as excess price increases. The senators should be asked whether their $3,338 figure comes from that report or another analysis, and to provide the underlying calculation.
Rising Prices Don’t Establish Who Caused Them
The data confirms that prices have risen, but a year-over-year CPI comparison cannot show that each increase was caused by Trump or a specific policy.
ITEP makes its own attribution by comparing inflation with a pre-term CBO projection and identifying policies it says contributed to the difference, including tariffs, the Iran war effect on fuel and immigration policies. That attribution is ITEP’s analysis, is separate from the BLS price indexes.
The distinction matters for the “Trump Tax” label as it communicates the senators’ political argument, while the underlying data measures price movements.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Becca Flood and Paul Donnelley.