Former President Donald Trump held a press conference on Aug. 15 outside his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, to discuss the impacts of inflation on American consumers.
“We will stop inflation. We will make America affordable again,” he said.
Standing next to a table with grocery products, including coffee, cereal, bagels, and bacon, the former president said everyday Americans face oppressively high prices on normal expenses.
“Grocery prices have skyrocketed,” Trump remarked, citing inflated costs for bread, butter, baby formula, eggs, and other groceries.
He criticized Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to prevent companies from price gouging, suggesting the plan could have unintended consequences.
“She wants price controls, and if they worked, I'd go along with it, too, but they don’t work. They actually have the exact opposite impact and effect, but it leads to food shortages, rationing, hunger, dramatically more inflation.”
Trump spoke for more than 90 minutes on inflation, energy production, immigration, housing, and supply chain disruptions.
After his speech, he took questions from reporters.
On day one, Trump said his administration would “immediately bring prices down” by increasing oil and natural gas drilling.
He said that Biden–Harris policies have reduced domestic energy production, driving prices up further throughout the economy.
However, Trump went further with his vision for American energy, expressing concern over the downstream effects of renewables like wind and solar.
“Look, I’m all for clean energy. I want clean water, I want clean air. But you can’t destroy your country over it,” he said.
Trump described bird fatalities from wind farms and said he worried about the same happening to plant life if the United States builds large solar farms in the desert, as is the case in countries like Egypt and India, among others. He said he is a “big fan of solar” as long as it doesn’t damage plants.
The former president also said he would reverse the Biden administration policy of creating increasingly higher emission standards for gas vehicles, often referred to as the “electric vehicle mandate.”
Trump said that even with the best electric vehicles on the market, the United States will still be reliant on electrical plants to power them. He suggested fossil fuels are the only answer to America’s energy demand, and extended that to natural gas fracking.
“You have to frack. We need the energy, and Pennsylvania needs the jobs, but Pennsylvania needs the energy also,” the former president said.
When asked by a reporter about Harris’ plan to have the federal government ban price gouging, Trump said it “probably can’t [be done] legally” and suggested it would drive up prices in the long term.
He also criticized Harris for being the tie-breaking vote to pass the American Rescue Plan Act in the U.S. Senate, a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill intended to bolster recovery from the pandemic.
The rates have been linked to pandemic-era supply chain shortages as well, which Trump said he would directly address if reelected.
“We’re going to bring back our supply chains to stop costly supply chain disruptions,” he said, adding that housing costs are also too high for average consumers.
