European and British outlets are running in lockstep to blame Trump for rising prices — and they're banking on you forgetting who started the fire. Both Europe Says and The Guardian published essentially the same Steven Greenhouse column arguing that Trump's tariff wars and the Iran conflict have fueled inflation, with The Guardian framing it as straight commentary and Europe Says presenting it as news analysis. What neither outlet touches: the Biden-era spending blowout and Federal Reserve money printing that drove inflation to 40-year highs before Trump ever took the oath again.
The facts Greenhouse marshals aren't wrong on their own terms. Trump promised to slash prices on day one and hasn't delivered. Gas averages $4.28 a gallon nationally, per AAA. Yale Budget Lab pegs the tariff cost to the average household at $1,100 this year. Moody's Analytics says the Iran war has cost households roughly $2,000 through higher energy, fuel, and transportation costs. Both wages and prices have risen 5.4% since January 2025 — meaning zero real wage growth. A Fox News poll found 77% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of tariffs. Those numbers are what they are.
But here's what gets laundered out of the narrative entirely. The White House defense — buried deep in both pieces — actually names the root cause. Spokesman Matthew Middleton said Trump has "blunted Biden's historic 40-year high inflation crisis." That's not just spin. Inflation hit 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden. The Fed printed trillions. Congress spent trillions more on COVID relief, green subsidies, and overseas commitments. Supply chains were shattered by policies that offshored American manufacturing for decades — the same globalist framework both parties championed. Neither Greenhouse nor his European republication partners mention any of it. The Guardian's framing treats inflation as though it materialized the moment Trump reimposed tariffs, as if the preceding four years of Biden-era monetary and fiscal expansion simply didn't exist.
The Iran war deserves its own scrutiny — and not the kind these outlets are offering. Greenhouse reports that gas prices have risen over 40%, diesel nearly 70%, and some fertilizer prices 20% since the war began, with Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. Farmers are drowning. That's a direct consequence of a foreign intervention with no defined exit strategy and no articulated U.S. interest that justifies the cost to American households. The question isn't just whether Trump ignored warnings about the inflationary impact. It's why any American president would commit the country to a conflict that predictably detonates the energy market at home — and why the press corps that spent a decade demanding accountability for foreign entanglements suddenly can't ask it straight.
Tariffs are a tax on imported goods. Wars in the Persian Gulf spike oil prices. These are facts. So is this: the inflation crisis was built in the Biden years by people who printed money, spent recklessly, and hollowed out American production. The Guardian and Europe Says want you to forget that part. Don't.
The open question is whether either party will ever face the voters on the full record — Biden's spending and Trump's tariffs and wars alike — or whether the permanent press will keep slicing the timeline to protect the people who lit the match.
