In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler discuss what President Donald Trump needs to tell Americans about prices and when they can expect to come down.  

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. 

Jack Fowler: The supermarket, Victor, is still a tough place to conquer, despite inflation reduced and despite some prices, eggs and other things, we hear are down. My wife the other day, who cooks some Italian food, even though she’s Irish, she buys ricotta, says, “I’m looking at this thing. It cost me seven bucks. A few years ago, it cost me four bucks.” These little anecdotes, it’s hard to— 

Victor Davis Hanson: Yes. I just got my insurance bill for cars. It’s outrageous. You know what I mean? It’s like the price of a used car. So, [President Donald Trump] needs to say the following: “I left in 2020 with a 1.7 inflation rate. [Former President] Joe Biden borrowed $7 trillion. Economists like Larry Summers said, ‘Don’t do this. Do not borrow money and put it into people who are coming out of the lockdown with pent-up consumer demand, when the supply chains are still endangered, and there’s not enough goods and services to supply the demand that has not expressed itself for two years but now will be flushed with entitlement cash.’ And he did it anyway.” 

And in 2022, we had 9.1% inflation, but he needs to say, “Joe Biden had 5.1 inflation on average every year of his four years. I came in on Jan. 20. I’ve only been in there little over 10 months, and the inflation rate is about where it was when I came in, about 2.8 or something, 2.9, getting close to 3. And so, we are addressing it, but it’s going to take me another two or three or four months to come down.” 

On the tariffs, he’s doing what he always should have. He’s doing “Art of the Deal.” He had very high punitive tariffs. On this program, we said we didn’t understand the logic of tariffing Britain or Israel or Australia, who had, they had deficits, and we had surpluses with them. But I think what we saw with Switzerland when they sent over their grandees to lower the tariffs from, I don’t know, 30 or 40, down to 15, now he’s going to the point where the official policy of the United States will be reciprocal tariffs. And if you think that is not sufficient, you can make up the difference by investing in the United States with companies to lower your tariff costs and to give us an economic stimulus.  

So, I think you’re going to see a lot more reciprocal tariffs rather than punitive tariffs. And that’s going to help too. So, but you’re right, that does temporarily drive up prices, although Forbes and The Wall Street Journal said they didn’t think that it’s resulted with more than a 1% increase that can be attributable to the tariffs so far. But when they come down, it’ll be good. 

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