On April 1, the White House released a presidential message for National Financial Literacy Month 2025. While touting the benefits of Financial Literacy – which indeed is a worthwhile endeavor, the President unashamedly stated, “Upon taking office, I took immediate action to end the cost-of-living crisis…delivering long overdue relief to hardworking American families.”

Really?

Given the date, maybe it was all just an April Fool’s Day joke?

Or perhaps the President and his writers need to take the message of Financial Literacy to heart and undergo some remedial lessons themselves.

In the two-and-a-half months since taking office, one can hardly conclude that the Trump Administration has ‘delivered long overdue relief to hardworking American families.’

The Economic Research Service at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) puts out monthly outlooks that not only summarize the previous month’s Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index numbers, but they also provide a forward-looking analysis.

The agency examines various combinations of goods, ranging from shelter to energy, to the essential category of food. The all-item CPI, as stated by the USDA, is a measure of economy-wide inflation, and it increased 0.4 percent from January 2025 to February 2025, with February’s year-over-year growth at 2.8 percent.

Two areas are specifically interesting in the analysis of the numbers.

First, the year-over-year seasonally unadjusted CPI numbers showing regional differences are striking.

If you happen to live in the Baltimore, Detroit, or New York/Newark-Jersey City areas – yikes, your year-over-year price increases have been staggering.

In February 2024, Baltimore, Detroit, and the combined New York-New Jersey area saw unadjusted CPI rates of 2.6%, 2.8%, and 2.9%, respectively.

Fast-forward to February 2025, and the year-over-year increases are substantial – 3.2% in Baltimore, 3.3% in Detroit, and the poor folks in New York are dealing with a whopping 4.2%!

All are significantly higher than the national 2.8% year-over-year rate.

Are families in these three large American metropolitan areas feeling the ‘long-overdue relief’?

Doubtful.

Interestingly, Houston and Miami both saw decreases year-over-year in their rates. One has to assume that the fluctuations are likely due to shelter and energy costs in those specific areas.

What is more universal and likely to have a more significant impact on the everyday household is the outlook for food prices in 2025.

Food – a basic human necessity – is often a key indicator of what is impacting everyday households. We all have to eat, but the impact of food prices disproportionately affects low-income families the most. They are the ones who are forced to forego nutrition when prices rise too much.

Specifically, examining food prices for all items, the monthly increase was 0.2%. However, the year-over-year increase was 2.6%. The largest increases were in core protein sources – specifically, meat and eggs – with eggs remaining the outlier. Historically a low-cost protein source that many low-income families relied on, the USDA found that “retail egg prices increased by 12.5 percent in February 2025, following increases of 13.8 and 8.4 percent in January and December, respectively. Egg prices in February 2025 were 58.8 percent higher than in February 2024.”

How is that delivering long overdue relief to hardworking American families?

Ultimately, the outlook for continued food price increases offers little relief for hardworking American families. The USDA provides the following outlook: “In 2025, overall food prices are anticipated to rise slightly faster than the historical average rate of growth. In 2025, prices for all food are predicted to increase 3.2 percent, with a prediction interval of 1.3 to 5.1 percent. Food-at-home prices are predicted to increase 2.7 percent, with a prediction interval of -0.1 to 5.7 percent. Food-away-from-home prices are predicted to increase 3.7 percent, with a prediction interval of 2.6 to 4.9 percent.”

Surely, the President’s self-congratulations on his immediate action to end the cost-of-living crisis and deliverance of long overdue relief to hardworking American families was a joke.