CNN Anchor Breaks New Inflation Jump — ‘Much MUCH Higher Than When Trump Took Office’

CNN anchor John Berman broke the news that a new surge in inflation is “much MUCH higher” than when President Donald Trump took office.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its CPI (Consumer Price Index) report on Wednesday morning, which showed a surge in annual inflation to 4.2% and overall prices increasing by 0.5% for the month.

On Wednesday’s edition of CNN News Central, Berman teed up CNN senior business reporter Matt Egan by noting that while the CPI report is in line with expectations, “expectations were bad!”:

JOHN BERMAN: All right, we have major breaking economic news. Inflation data just in. It’s at its highest level in three years, up over 4%.

Much, MUCH higher than when President Trump took office!

Let’s get right to CNN’s Matt Egan for these numbers.

They are in line with expectations, but expectations were bad!

CNN BUSINESS REPORTER MATT EGAN: Yeah, John, look, 4% inflation is back, and the war with Iran is the reason why.

So consumer prices up by half a percentage point between April and May. That is as expected, and it is actually a slight improvement from the month before.

However, this is now the fastest three-month average since the four-decade high for inflation back in 2022. This is not a blip, right?

And this was enough to lift the annual inflation rate to 4.2 percent, the highest level in three years.

Now, this looks at the trend for one year inflation going back for the last three years or so. And you can see that it had been going in the right direction. In fact, when the president took office early last year, inflation was just three percent. It got to as low as 2.3% in April of 2025, now 4.2%.

Now the good news here is that this does look a lot less widespread than it did four years ago, right? If you exclude food and energy, inflation, core inflation went up only by 0.2% on a monthly basis, that beat expectations. On an annual basis, it’s just below 3%. So it’s not where it’s supposed to be, but again, it doesn’t look as widespread as it did four years ago.

Of course, consumers cannot exclude food and energy from their budgets.

And so when we look at some of the drivers here for why inflation is going in the wrong direction, gasoline, not surprisingly, is the biggest factor, right? Gas prices up by 7% on a monthly basis.

Now, thankfully, gas prices have come down in the last few weeks. They’re actually down 20 days in a row. So that should help for the June inflation report.

But this is not just gas. Airfare also. Jet fuel has skyrocketed. So airfare up by almost 3% on a monthly basis.

Overall, groceries were only slightly higher on the month, but some things got more expensive, including eggs and lettuce as well.

Now, the problem for consumers is their paychecks are just not going as far, right? Wages are up. But not nearly as much as prices. So wages in May were 3.4 percent, but inflation of 4.2 percent. That means if you adjust for inflation, real wages are actually shrinking.

BERMAN: Yeah, again, the number you have to remember, 3.4 compared to 4.2, right there, it’s just not enough. Not enough to keep up right now.

CNN BUSINESS REPORTER MATT EGAN: And it’s forced a lot of consumers to dip into savings to put some of their spending on credit cards, neither of which is healthy, neither which is sustainable.

Watch above via CNN News Central.

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