In prices of the day, the basket went up under every completed presidency except Reagan's and the first Bush's, and the biggest jump came under Joe Biden. In today's dollars the story changes: the five items got cheaper, or held level, under five of the seven completed presidencies.
The basket is one each of: a dozen grade A large eggs, a gallon of whole milk, a pound of 100% ground beef, a pound of ground coffee and a gallon of regular gasoline, at BLS U.S. city average prices. Each term runs from the month of the inauguration to the month before the next one; the current term runs to the latest month. Today's dollars are October 2026 dollars, adjusted with the CPI. The figures update every month from BLS data. How everything was measured is in section 09.
01The Scoreboard
Two cautions before the numbers. These are national average prices for five products, not a measure of a household's whole grocery bill, and the products behind each average can change over time. And none of these prices is set by the president, a point section 09 comes back to. Read the table as a record of what shoppers paid, not as a grade.
Start with prices of the day, the numbers people remember from the checkout. The basket cost $8.19 in January 1984, the first month BLS priced all five items, and $8.12 at the end of Ronald Reagan's second term. Gasoline is why: it fell 28% over his two terms, to 93 cents a gallon, after world oil prices collapsed in 1986. Under George H.W. Bush the basket barely moved again. After that it rose under every president: 22% under Bill Clinton, 45% under George W. Bush, 10% under Barack Obama, 2% in Donald Trump's first term and 50% under Joe Biden, from $15.82 to $23.77. In Trump's second term, through October 2026, it is +9% so far, from $24.75 to $26.88.
George W. Bush's number needs a note. BLS stopped publishing a coffee price after December 2007, so his basket ends there, with gasoline at $3.02. In 2008 gasoline climbed to $4.09 and then crashed to $1.69 by December. Leave coffee out and the other four items rose 37% over his full eight years, or +14% in today's dollars.
Prices of the day flatter the early presidents, though, because everything cost less then, wages included. Switch the table to today's dollars and it answers a better question: did these five things get more expensive than everything else? By that measure the basket got cheaper under Reagan (−16%), the first Bush (−15%), Obama (−1%) and Trump's first term (−5%), and kept pace with inflation under Clinton. It outran inflation under George W. Bush (+21%) and Biden (+25%). So far in Trump's second term it is +2% in today's dollars.
For a broader yardstick, the CPI for all food at home, which covers everything households buy at the grocery store, rose 22% under Biden while these five items rose 50%. Under Clinton the two matched at 22%. In Trump's second term, food at home is +4% so far. The table can also show the average change per year, which puts four-year and eight-year presidencies side by side.
Change from the first month of the term to the last, in prices of the day
| President | Eggs | Milk | Beef | Coffee | Gas | Basket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reagan1981-1989 | −12% | +9%c | +8%a | +5% | −28% | −1%* |
| G.H.W. Bush1989-1993 | −1% | +13%c | +7% | −20% | +24% | 0% |
| Clinton1993-2001 | +7% | +20%c | +4% | +37% | +33% | +22% |
| G.W. Bush2001-2009 | +81% | +29% | +42% | +14%b | +15% | +45%* |
| Obama2009-2017 | −25% | −8% | +51% | +17%b | +25% | +10%* |
| Trump (1st)2017-2021 | −7% | +7% | +11% | +1% | −8% | +2% |
| Biden2021-2025 | +183% | +18% | +41% | +48% | +35% | +50% |
| Trump (2nd, so far)2025-now | −53% | +2% | +22% | +32% | +39% | +9% |
a Ground beef starts in January 1984, when BLS began pricing it, so Reagan's beef figures (and the beef in his basket) run from 1984.b BLS published no ground coffee price from late 2007 to late 2009, so George W. Bush's coffee ends in December 2007 and Barack Obama's starts in December 2009.c Milk before July 1995 is estimated from the BLS half-gallon price; section 09 explains how.* The basket only uses months in which BLS published all five prices, so each total is what the five items cost in one month: January 1984 to December 1988 for Reagan, January 2001 to December 2007 for George W. Bush and December 2009 to December 2016 for Obama.
Click a column heading to rank the presidents by that item; click it again to flip the order. “Last month” for the current term is the latest month.
The basket in prices of the day and in today's dollars
| President | Basket, first month | Basket, last month | Change | In today's dollars | All prices (CPI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reagan | $8.19 | $8.12 | −1% | −16% | +18% |
| G.H.W. Bush | $8.28 | $8.26 | 0% | −15% | +17% |
| Clinton | $8.26 | $10.07 | +22% | 0% | +22% |
| G.W. Bush | $10.25 | $14.91 | +45% | +21% | +20% |
| Obama | $13.35 | $14.74 | +10% | −1% | +12% |
| Trump (1st) | $15.29 | $15.66 | +2% | −5% | +7% |
| Biden | $15.82 | $23.77 | +50% | +25% | +21% |
| Trump (2nd, so far) | $24.75 | $26.88 | +9% | +2% | +6% |
02The Basket Since 1984
Here is the basket every month since January 1984, the first month BLS priced all five items, with each presidency shaded in its party's color. The solid line is what the five items cost at the time. The dashed line is the same basket in today's dollars, which strips out general inflation.
The solid line mostly climbs, with sharp breaks in late 2008, when gasoline fell from $4.09 a gallon in July to $1.69 in December, in spring 2020, when lockdowns emptied the roads, and again in 2025 and 2026, when egg prices came down from their bird flu peak. The dashed line moves sideways. In today's dollars the basket was cheapest in February 2002, at $18.18, and most expensive in March 2025, at $28.16. Gasoline, and lately eggs, account for most of the swings.
The five-item basket, monthly, January 1984 to October 2026
Hover or tap for any month. Gray stretches are estimated: BLS published no coffee price for much of 2007-2009 and 2018-2019, and no grocery prices for October 2025, so those months are drawn on a straight line between the published months on either side. The term figures elsewhere in this article use only published prices.
03Pick a President
Choose any presidency to see it on its own: what each item cost in the first month and the last, the change in both kinds of dollars, and how many minutes of work the basket took. It opens on the current term, which updates as each month's prices come out.
The president picker needs JavaScript. The scoreboard in section 01 has every term.
04Head to Head
The argument usually comes down to two presidents, so pick any two and compare them item by item. It opens on the pairing people raise most, Trump's first term against Biden's. Over Trump's first four years the basket rose 2.4%, from $15.29 to $15.66, while overall prices rose 7%. Under Biden it rose 50%, while overall prices rose 21%. Eggs account for a large part of that gap: they went from $1.47 a dozen to $4.15 under Biden as avian flu forced farmers to cull tens of millions of laying hens. But gasoline, beef and coffee all rose faster under Biden too, in the wave of inflation that followed the pandemic. Trump's first-term number had help of its own: the 2020 lockdowns pushed gasoline down to $1.88 in April 2020, and it was still below its January 2017 price when he left office.
05The Race
Press play to watch all five prices month by month from 1980, with the president's name changing as each term begins. In prices of the day the bars climb for decades. Switch to today's dollars and most of them wobble in place or shrink. A pound of coffee cost $3.21 in January 1980, which is $13.92 in today's dollars; a dozen eggs cost 88 cents, or $3.81.
Ground beef appears in 1984 when BLS began pricing it. Milk before July 1995 is estimated from the half-gallon price, and coffee is drawn on a straight line across months with no published price.
06Minutes of Work
Prices are only half of it, because pay changes too. The chart divides the basket by BLS average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers, about four in five private-sector employees, to get the minutes of work it takes to buy all five items. In January 1984 the basket took 59 minutes. By the end of Trump's first term it took 37, about the lowest in the series, although that figure is flattered: millions of lower-paid workers lost their jobs in 2020, which pushed the average wage of the people still working up. It took 47 minutes at the end of Biden's term and takes 49 minutes now.
Measured this way, the basket got cheaper over every presidency from Reagan's to Trump's first except George W. Bush's, when it went from 43 minutes to 51 by December 2007, and it got more expensive under Biden, from 38 minutes to 47. Wages rose 22% over Biden's term; the basket rose 50%.
Minutes of work at the average hourly wage to buy the basket
| Term | Basket | Hourly wage | Minutes of work |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1984 | $8.19 | $8.38 | 59 |
| Reagan, end | $8.12 | $9.60 | 51 |
| G.H.W. Bush, end | $8.26 | $10.90 | 45 |
| Clinton, end | $10.07 | $14.29 | 42 |
| G.W. Bush, end | $14.91 | $17.68 | 51 |
| Obama, end | $14.74 | $21.76 | 41 |
| Trump (1st), end | $15.66 | $25.16 | 37 |
| Biden, end | $23.77 | $30.66 | 47 |
| Trump (2nd, so far), latest | $26.88 | $32.75 | 49 |
Last month of each term, and the latest month for the current term. The first bar is January 1984, the first month BLS priced all five items. The basket months are the same as in the scoreboard (December 2007 for George W. Bush). Wages are gross, before taxes: BLS average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, total private, seasonally adjusted. For more on prices measured in time, see the Hours-of-Work Price Museum.
07Item by Item
Each small chart shows one item's change over every term. The lighter bar marked II* is Trump's second term so far.
Eggs, per dozen
Milk, per gallon
Ground beef, per pound
Coffee, per pound
Gasoline, per gallon
Eggs
Eggs move more than anything else in the basket, and avian flu is the reason. The worst outbreaks, in 2015 and again from 2022, killed or forced the culling of tens of millions of laying hens. Eggs rose 183% under Biden, from $1.47 to $4.15, and 81% under George W. Bush. They fell 25% under Obama even though the 2015 outbreak pushed them to $2.97 in September of that year. The all-time high came in March 2025, at $6.23 a dozen; in Trump's second term they are −53% so far, from $4.95 in January 2025 to $2.32.
Milk
Milk is the steady one. In today's dollars it fell or held level over every completed term except George W. Bush's (+8%). Its biggest drops came under Reagan (−21%) and Obama (−20%). Under Obama a gallon went from $3.58 to $3.29, the only completed term in which milk got cheaper even in prices of the day.
Ground beef
Ground beef rose under every president, in prices of the day, and the biggest increase came under Obama, 51%, after drought in the southern Plains from 2011 forced ranchers to sell off cattle. It rose 41% under Biden. The U.S. cattle herd has since fallen to its smallest since 1951, and beef has kept setting records; it is +22% so far in Trump's second term.
Coffee
Coffee follows the harvests in Brazil and Vietnam. When the International Coffee Agreement's export quotas ended in 1989 and flooded the market, it fell 20% under the first Bush. Frosts in Brazil in 1994 then took a pound from $2.53 to $4.48 within months, and Clinton's two terms ended with coffee 37% higher than they began. It rose 48% under Biden as world coffee prices climbed, and set new records in 2025 and 2026, helped by U.S. tariffs: Brazilian coffee carried a 10% tariff from April 2025 and 50% from August until the duties were lifted in November. It is +32% so far in Trump's second term.
Gasoline
Gasoline is where first-month-to-last misleads most. It rose only 15% under George W. Bush because it crashed from $4.09 in July 2008 to $1.69 by December. It fell 28% under Reagan after the 1986 oil price collapse and 8% in Trump's first term after the pandemic. Under Biden it rose 35%, peaking at $5.06 in June 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. In Trump's second term it is +39% so far: the war with Iran that began on Feb. 28, 2026 nearly shut shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and gasoline averaged $4.65 in May 2026.
08Biggest Jumps and Drops
Here is every item and every term ranked by change in today's dollars, which puts 1985 and 2025 on the same scale. Among completed terms, the biggest rise was eggs under Biden, +134% after inflation. Next come eggs under George W. Bush (+51%) and ground beef under Obama (+32%). The biggest falls were gasoline under Reagan (−48%), eggs under Reagan (−36%) and eggs under Obama (−35%). The current term is marked “so far” and moves every month.
| Biggest rises | Change, today's dollars | Prices of the day |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Eggs, Biden$1.47 → $4.15, Jan. 2021 to December 2024 | +134% | +183% |
| 2. Eggs, G.W. Bush$1.01 → $1.83, Jan. 2001 to December 2008 | +51% | +81% |
| 3. Ground beef, Obama$2.36 → $3.56, Jan. 2009 to December 2016 | +32% | +51% |
| 4. Gasoline, Trump (2nd, so far)$3.21 → $4.45, Jan. 2025 to October 2026 | +31% | +39% |
| 5. Coffee, Trump (2nd, so far)$7.02 → $9.25, Jan. 2025 to October 2026 | +24% | +32% |
| 6. Coffee, Biden$4.59 → $6.78, Jan. 2021 to December 2024 | +22% | +48% |
| 7. Ground beef, G.W. Bush$1.69 → $2.41, Jan. 2001 to December 2008 | +18% | +42% |
| 8. Ground beef, Biden$3.96 → $5.61, Jan. 2021 to December 2024 | +17% | +41% |
| Biggest falls | Change, today's dollars | Prices of the day |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Eggs, Trump (2nd, so far)$4.95 → $2.32, Jan. 2025 to October 2026 | −56% | −53% |
| 2. Gasoline, Reagan$1.30 → $0.93, Jan. 1981 to December 1988 | −48% | −28% |
| 3. Eggs, Reagan$0.94 → $0.83, Jan. 1981 to December 1988 | −36% | −12% |
| 4. Eggs, Obama$1.85 → $1.38, Jan. 2009 to December 2016 | −35% | −25% |
| 5. Coffee, G.H.W. Bush$2.96 → $2.36, Jan. 1989 to December 1992 | −32% | −20% |
| 6. Coffee, Reagan$2.78 → $2.92, Jan. 1981 to December 1988 | −24% | +5% |
| 7. Milk, Reagan$1.85 → $2.03, Jan. 1981 to December 1988 | −21% | +9% |
| 8. Milk, Obama$3.58 → $3.29, Jan. 2009 to December 2016 | −20% | −8% |
09How This Was Measured
What a president can and can't move
None of these prices is set in Washington. Eggs follow bird flu, gasoline follows world oil prices and refinery capacity, coffee follows harvests half a world away, and beef follows a cattle cycle that takes years to turn. Presidents can nudge prices with tariffs, energy policy, sanctions and spending, and the Federal Reserve's interest rate decisions shape inflation as a whole, but a president who takes office in the middle of a shortage or leaves in the middle of a crash inherits a number he did little to earn. Read the scoreboard as a record of what shoppers paid, not as a grade.
Prices. BLS Average Price Data, U.S. city average, monthly and not seasonally adjusted, read from the St. Louis Fed's FRED database: eggs, grade A, large, per dozen (APU0000708111); milk, fresh, whole, fortified, per gallon (APU0000709112); ground beef, 100% beef, per pound (APU0000703112); coffee, 100% ground roast, all sizes, per pound (APU0000717311); and gasoline, unleaded regular, per gallon (APU000074714). BLS collects these prices for the Consumer Price Index. BLS notes that average prices are best used to describe the price level in a given month, and that its CPI indexes for each category are the better measure of change over time, because the products behind an average can shift. The egg price, for example, covers grade A large white eggs of every kind, including organic, cage-free and free-range, so a change in what stores sell moves the average. This article uses average prices anyway, because dollars and cents are what people remember, and checks them against the CPI for food at home.
Terms. Each term runs from the month of the inauguration (January) to the December before the next one, so each month counts once. The current term runs to the latest month BLS has published, October 2026.
Today's dollars. Every price is adjusted to October 2026 dollars with the CPI-U for all items, not seasonally adjusted (CPIAUCNS); the Inflation Calculator does the same conversion for any amount. Because of the 2025 federal government shutdown, BLS published no CPI and no grocery average prices for October 2025 (it did publish a gasoline price). Term figures never use that month. For today's dollars, the CPI for October 2025 is taken as the average of September and November, and the charts draw the grocery prices that month on a straight line, shown in gray as estimated.
Gaps. Ground beef starts in January 1984. BLS published no coffee price for much of 2007 to 2009 and 2018 to 2019; where a term starts or ends inside a gap, an item's own figures use the nearest published month inside the term, as footnoted. The charts draw these gaps on a straight line, in gray. Before July 1995 BLS priced whole milk by the half gallon, not the gallon. Twice the half-gallon price runs about 19% above the gallon price, because bigger containers cost less per ounce, so earlier months use the half-gallon price times 1.678, the average ratio of the two prices over the 30 months BLS collected both (July 1995 to December 1997).
The basket. One of each item, added up, using only months in which BLS published all five prices, so every total is what the five items cost in a single month. For three terms that moves an end point: Reagan's basket starts in January 1984, George W. Bush's ends in December 2007 and Obama's starts in December 2009. The CPI comparisons for each term use the same months. The basket is not a cost-of-living index: CPI food at home covers far more items, weighted by what households actually buy. Five items that people quote at each other are what this article is about.
Wages. BLS average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, total private (AHETPI), seasonally adjusted, for the same months as the basket. These are gross wages, before taxes and deductions.
Updates. The figures for the current term, the charts and the today's-dollar amounts update each month after BLS publishes new prices. Data last updated November 11, 2026.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Average Price Data; series via FRED (APU0000708111, APU0000709112, APU0000709111, APU0000703112, APU0000717311, APU000074714)
- BLS, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, all items, not seasonally adjusted (CPIAUCNS)
- BLS, Consumer Price Index, food at home, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted (CUUR0000SAF11)
- BLS, Current Employment Statistics, average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees, total private (AHETPI)
- Daily Coffee News, Trump order eliminates all tariffs on Brazilian coffee, Nov. 21, 2025
- Trading Economics, US gas prices surge in March amid Middle East war, March 31, 2026
- The Cattle Site, US cattle herd hits lowest level since 1951
- USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Confirmed HPAI detections in commercial and backyard flocks
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