US consumer inflation hotter than expected as midterms loom

Your prices have come way down. You know, I inherited the worst inflation in history. And now, if you look, we took out the worst from Biden, Sleepy Joe. It's a claim Donald Trump has continued to make across the country. He says the Biden administration caused America's affordability problem and now costs are coming down. But the U.S. president's statements have been contrasted by the government's own data. Wednesday's major inflation report shows consumer prices in the United States rose by 3.7% in September compared to a year earlier, higher than the majority of economists predicted, and up from the 3% figure when Trump took office. The main driver is the war in Iran that has pushed up global gas and oil prices, and early voters have already started taking their concerns to the polls. Well, obviously the cost of living is super important. But the Iran war is really a big, big motivator for me. Democrats are trying to capitalize on the issue ahead of the midterms, such as here in Ohio, where four in 10 people say they are financially worse off than two years earlier. You know, they promised that on day one they were going to tackle inflation and affordability. They were going to they were going to make everyone's lives better. And I don't think that you would I think you would be hard pressed to find a single person who thinks that their life is better today than it was in 2024. Ohio, once a swing state, made a hard right turn in 2016 when Trump won the support of working class voters. Now polls suggest that come November it could shift blue in both the House and the Senate. Trump has urged voters in the state to pretend that he is on the ballot. Analysts say the outcome will likely reflect the popularity of the president himself and the decisions he has made.