May 12, 2026
President Trump just said he does not care how much his war with Iran is hitting your wallet.
Here are the facts. According to today’s inflation report, as of April, this war is hitting your wallet hard on a lot of fronts. And to add insult to injury, this report also showed whatever small wage increase you may have seen over the last year just got wiped out. And I think we all need to brace ourselves for more of this financial hardship because there is no end in sight to the war.
Before I share the troubling numbers from today’s Consumer Price Index report and share what else Trump had to say about inflation — which you’re going to want to hear — I want to thank my paid FactsHQ subscribers for voting overwhelmingly for this video as the bonus this week. If you want to vote on next week’s bonus story and join my private live event tomorrow night, make sure you follow these easy steps and become a paid subscriber too. It is because of my awesome paid FactsHQ subscribers that I am able to continue to do this work every single day. If it wasn’t for them, this channel would disappear. So if you want to support my work, and only if you can, please consider joining my FactsHQ Substack community.
OK, so first — according to today’s CPI report — inflation in the month of April increased 3.8% over April of last year. 3.8%! That’s the fastest increase of inflation we’ve seen since May of 2023. For the record, the Federal Reserve wants that number to be 2%. 3.8% is nowhere near 2%. Of course, it is nowhere near the 9.1% peak inflation we saw coming out of the pandemic in June of 2022 — but the pandemic wasn’t a choice. That inflation spike happened to the whole world. This war with Iran was Trump’s choice, but he says he made that choice for a good reason.
Just for clarity, I don’t know where in the world the president is getting an inflation number at 1.7%. In the three months prior to the war with Iran — which is the timeframe he’s talking about — according to Trump’s own government, inflation was 2.7% in December of 2025 and 2.4% in both January and February of 2026. None of those numbers are 1.7%. Far from it. And whether you think we’re in the golden age of America is up to you.
Now, I’m going to show you the actual numbers of how this war with Iran is impacting inflation in a second. But before I do, I want to put those numbers into context for you because, as I mentioned, for the first time in three years, inflation is now outpacing your wage growth — which is why you probably feel like it’s hard to afford just the basics.
This is data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics between January of 2022 and April of 2026. The blue line is inflation and the red line is wage growth. In an ideal world, you want the red line to be above the blue line. But of course, when inflation was really high in 2022 coming out of the pandemic — see how high inflation was compared to wage growth — this is not good. But see right here in May of 2023 when the lines crossed? That was the starting point for when wage growth and inflation were right again. Wage growth was outpacing inflation all the way until April of 2026. Here, let me zoom in so you can see it better. Right there — you can see, according to today’s inflation report, inflation has crossed over and is now slightly higher than wage growth.
Now that you know that, let’s look at today’s inflation numbers. As I reported would happen, we are now starting to see how the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are showing up in these inflation numbers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says by far gasoline was the biggest contributor to this increasing inflation. Of course, this gasoline spike is absolutely a direct impact of the closure of the strait. In April, gasoline was up in this country a whopping 28.4% compared to April of last year, and up nearly 5.5% between March and April.
Heating oil and diesel fuel were up a staggering 54.3% year over year and up nearly 6% month over month.
But as I have also been reporting, when oil and gasoline prices go up, that seeps into the costs of other things because lots of the things we consume and buy have to be transported by truck. So when diesel fuel prices go up, so do the costs of those goods — like food. And we are now just starting to see those diesel prices being factored in.
Overall, food was up more than 3% between April of this year and April of last year. But you can really start to see it when you look at fresh vegetables and beef. Fresh vegetables increased 11.5% between April of this year and April of last year and increased almost 4% just between March and April. Beef is up almost 15% year over year.
One other thing that I want to point out — which is also a direct result of this war with Iran — airfares have also skyrocketed because, of course, jet fuel is also impacted by the closure of the strait. According to today’s report, in April airline fares were up nearly 21% when compared to April of last year.
The last index you need to know about is the cost for shelter. That too is up again more than 3%.
Listen to Trump’s comments here.
Read the CPI report here.
