1. United States
2. Va.
3. Letter

Although President Donald Trump promised to bring down prices on day one, he did not. In fact, we learned recently that he’s bringing them up. Wholesale prices of everything but food and energy jumped 0.9% last month. That’s three times the expected increase. The July spike in wholesale prices was bigger than anything seen in the post-Covid years, including last year’s presidential campaign during which Trump said inflation was personally murdering us. Of course, those wholesale prices do not include food and energy. So how are those prices doing? Well, a year ago this month, Trump promised that “We will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months.” Here in the present day, electricity bills for July were, on average, 5.5% higher than they were in July 2024. Trump, of course, is racing to undo Pres. Joe Biden’s spending on U.S. energy, including grids and power-generation from the sun and wind. And Trump is unleashing big tech companies to further deplete America’s energy supply with power-draining AI server farms. I know, I know, Trump promised more oil drilling would lower prices. But here’s the thing, Big Oil won’t drill when prices are low. And the number of active rigs and wells in Texas, our biggest oil state, is now the lowest it’s been since October 2021. You “firmly believe that we must prioritize not only energy independence but energy dominance.” Please explain how any of this is energy dominance. And does energy dominance mean I’m going to pay more for energy? I didn’t vote for that. And finally, the price of fresh vegetables rose more last month than in any month post-Covid. That’s the largest spike in veggie prices that America has seen in summertime — which is when veggies are so plentiful you can practically pick them right out of the ground! — since 1947. What are you going to do about this?