Many years ago, we debuted the idea of a “stock market Mount Rushmore,” evaluating America’s best and worst presidents through the singular lens of equity performance.
But recently, we wondered: What if we viewed the Oval Office through a metric that speaks to all Americans? Say … inflation?
A recent Gallup survey suggests almost 60% of American adults own stock, but that still leaves about 113 million of us who don’t. But virtually everyone can tell you how they’ve been affected by the various price pains they’ve absorbed over the past few years: housing, gas, vehicles, education, insurance, eggs, meat and more.
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And while presidents may very well crow about stock-market performance where it’s advantageous, few topics wield more influence on their and other politicians’ electoral fates — and define their legacies — than inflation.
Concerns about rising costs helped Republicans take the House in 2022 and put Donald Trump into the White House for a second time in 2024. And persistent inflation is among the core reasons why polls are signaling a “blue wave” in the 2026 midterms.
So, let’s look at what an inflation Mount Rushmore might look like.
How we calculated presidential inflation numbers
As far as datasets go, this one is pretty straightforward.
Our focus is the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, which measures the prices of various goods and services paid by urban consumers. This index is known as the CPI-U, but it’s best known as just “CPI” — the headline measurement for inflation we regularly report on.
Specifically, we looked at seasonally adjusted CPI, which removes the effects of seasonal influences such as climatic conditions, holidays and sales.
Each president’s average inflation is simply an average of the year-over-year CPI growth for every month they were in office.
Seasonally adjusted CPI data, provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, goes back to 1947, and thus YoY growth figures start at 1948.
The best and worst presidents for inflation
A quick reminder before we show you the list: Much like presidential policy can contribute to the direction of the stock market, presidents have some effect on U.S. inflation — but they’re hardly the only determinant.
The Federal Reserve historically has had much more direct influence over inflation, and while presidents help shape the board, the central bank typically acts independently of the White House.
Outside factors weigh heavily, too. In just the past few years, we’ve seen the global post-COVID recovery, supply-chain chaos and Russia’s war on Ukraine wreak havoc on consumer prices. And even when presidential policy influences inflation, it doesn’t always do so immediately — in some cases, its effect isn’t fully felt until after that president has left office.
That’s a long way of saying that while presidents may very well be remembered for the inflationary environment they oversaw, being high or low on this list doesn’t imply that the president was the cause of said inflation.
Without further ado, here’s our list:
|
President |
Term |
Average inflation |
|
Jimmy Carter |
1977-1981 |
9.75% |
|
Gerald Ford |
1974-1977 |
8.13% |
|
Richard Nixon |
1969-1974 |
5.66% |
|
Joe Biden |
2021-2025 |
4.90% |
|
Ronald Reagan |
1981-1989 |
4.66% |
|
George H.W. Bush |
1989-1993 |
4.35% |
|
Harry S. Truman |
1948-1953* |
3.57% |
|
Average |
1948-present |
3.52% |
|
Donald Trump (2nd Term) |
2025-present |
2.98% |
|
George W. Bush |
2001-2009 |
2.89% |
|
Bill Clinton |
1993-2001 |
2.61% |
|
Lyndon B. Johnson |
1963-1969 |
2.58% |
|
Donald Trump (1st Term) |
2017-2021 |
1.90% |
|
Barack Obama |
2009-2017 |
1.39% |
|
Dwight D. Eisenhower |
1953-1961 |
1.36% |
|
John F. Kennedy |
1961-1963 |
1.15% |
Average Inflation column represents the average year-over-year growth in the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index (CPI) for every month the president was in office, including partial months.
* Harry Truman’s term lasted from 1945 through 1953. However, year-over-year growth data for the seasonally adjusted CPI only goes back to 1948.
Source: St. Louis Fed, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average (CPIAUCSL), seasonally adjusted
Let’s take a closer look at the five most recent presidencies to better understand just how much influence our leaders have actually had:
Data is as of October 24, 2026. Average inflation refers to seasonally adjusted CPI. The historical average includes CPI data since 1949.
President Joe Biden
(Image credit: Mandel Ngan – Pool/Getty Images)
- Term: January 20, 2021-January 20, 2025
- Average inflation: 4.90% (1.38 percentage points above 3.52% historical average)
Of the five most recent presidencies, former President Joe Biden’s four-year stint was the only one in which inflation actually exceeded the long-term average.
Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act was his most direct contribution to inflation, but that was merely additional fuel on top of a fire sparked by the factors we called out above. The U.S., along with the rest of the world, was reopening. Americans were flush with savings and ready to release pent-up consumer demand. But snarled ports, factory shutdowns and labor shortages kept goods scarce. Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine sent energy and food prices soaring.
U.S. CPI peaked at a 9.1% annual rate in June 2022, marking the highest such reading since 1981. And while the Federal Reserve originally insisted the inflationary surge was “transitory,” it rapidly ramped up its benchmark federal funds rate from near-zero to a range of 5.25%-5.50% by July 2023. That action helped to cool inflation down to below 3% for the majority of Biden’s final year in office.
President Donald Trump (Second Term)
(Image credit: Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
- Term: January 20, 2025-present
- Average inflation: 2.98% (-0.54)
Tariffs and the Iran War are the defining inflation stories of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Beginning in 2025, the administration imposed sweeping import duties that it claimed foreign exporters would bear. But a 2026 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that 90% of the costs were foisted on U.S. consumers and businesses.
Then in late February, the administration waged what has turned into an eight-month (and counting) war against Iran that has sent oil prices skyward. In September, diesel prices reached an all-time high of $6.53 per gallon. And in mid-October, U.S. regular-gas prices hit 158 consecutive days above $4 per gallon — breaking 2022’s record of 157 consecutive $4-plus days in a calendar year.
As it stands, Trump’s second term is still on pace for below-average inflation, but the current average is right around where inflation stood on his second Inauguration Day.
President George W. Bush
(Image credit: Chris Greenberg/Getty Images)
- Term: January 20, 2001-January 20, 2009
- Average inflation: 2.89% (-0.63)
Former President George W. Bush’s eight years began with a recession, the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Nothing you can really chalk up to “Dubya.”
That said, the Fed responded by slashing rates; the effective federal funds rate plunged to around 1% by 2003. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, as well as the costs of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, added to demand. Cheap credit helped inflate a housing bubble, though shelter’s weight in CPI and a flood of inexpensive imports from China kept inflation relatively tame for most of the period.
Energy was the wild card. Oil climbed from roughly $20 a barrel early in the term to a record near $147 in July 2008, driven by surging demand from emerging markets, supply constraints and geopolitical tensions. That spike pushed annual CPI above 5% that summer. Then the Great Recession hit, crashing commodity prices and demand alike, and inflation collapsed toward zero by the time Bush left office.
President Donald Trump (First Term)
(Image credit: Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images)
- Term: January 20, 2017-January 20, 2021
- Average inflation: 1.90% (-1.62)
President Trump’s first term produced low, stable inflation for three years, aided by a tight labor market that didn’t translate into much wage-driven price pressure. Low energy prices and a strong dollar helped, too.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 boosted demand late in the expansion, but the Fed responded with a series of rate hikes through 2018 before reversing course and cutting in 2019.
Trump dabbled in tariffs during his first term, too, placing duties on steel, aluminum and a wide range of Chinese goods. While these raised costs for some products (washing machines were a well-studied example), their impact on overall CPI was modest.
Then COVID-19 threw everything for a loop.
Lockdowns crushed consumer demand in spring 2020, driving annual inflation to almost nothing and dragging down the Trump I average. More than $3 trillion in COVID relief, via the CARES and Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations acts, as well as near-zero interest rates, set the stage for the economic (and inflation) snapback that followed after Trump left office.
President Barack Obama
(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski-Pool/Getty Images)
- Term: January 20, 2009-January 20, 2017
- Average inflation: 1.39% (-2.13)
Former President Barack Obama inherited the worst recession since the 1930s, and the slack it left behind kept a lid on prices for most of his tenure. Unemployment peaked at 10% in late 2009, and the U.S. economy actually experienced a period of deflation. A $787 billion stimulus package, as well as the Fed’s zero-rate policy and quantitative easing, were met with weak demand and a sluggish recovery.
Even when inflation did pick back up, it spent much of the next few years below the Fed’s 2% target (which the central bank adopted in 2012 under Bush appointee Ben Bernanke).
Inflation picked up to above 3% in 2011 when oil prices rose during the Arab Spring. But the U.S. shale boom ultimately flooded the market, and the U.S. dollar strengthened, kicking inflation back down to below 2% for most of the rest of Obama’s second term.
Obama boasted the lowest inflation average of any recent president — so much so that one of the Fed’s greatest worries was not too much inflation, but too little.