WASHINGTON — Despite repeated campaign promises to lower still-high prices on everything from eggs and beef to electricity and gasoline, President Donald Trump and his team have given no indication he intends to use his executive powers to try to attack this lingering problem.

Team Trump in recent days has signaled there’s no price-targeting executive action expected anytime soon, even as congressional Democrats begin to hammer the president over what they call a broken promise. And now, even Trump admits his announced tariffs on America’s top three trading partners — Canada, Mexico and China — would cause some further price “pain.”

Trump and his aides have boasted about him signing hundreds of executive actions — posted over eight pages (as of Monday afternoon) on the White House website — since he was sworn into a second term on Jan. 20. Yet, only one focused directly, if vaguely, on consumer prices, which have remained high even after inflation stabilized under the Biden administration.

The president on Monday spoke about new executive orders and proclamations and took questions in the Oval Office for over 30 minutes. He did not repeat his pledge to lower prices, nor did he preview any coming executive actions.

One Trump official on Friday sounded more like a member of the Biden White House as she predicted that prices would — eventually — come down due to the new administration’s comprehensive economic strategy.

“The president is intent on ensuring that he effectively implements tariffs while cutting inflation and costs for the American people. And the media has this way of just looking at everything in a microscope rather than looking at the whole-of-government economic approach that this president is taking,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

“He’s also … committed to tax cuts. He’s also clearly committed, as evidenced by his executive orders, to unleashing the might of our energy industry, which we know will eventually drive down inflation,” she said, making an energy claim that congressional Democrats and some economists have questioned. “And all the other economic measures that this president has made will have a Trump-incoming economic boom — just like we saw in our first term.”

Robert Lighthizer, Trump’s chief trade representative during his first term, told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday that when implemented together, Trump’s economy policy “has the potential” to usher in a “renaissance” in America.

Former President Joe Biden, his top spokesperson and economic aides often described his economic approach, dubbed “Bidenomics,” in the same wonky manner. Still, Leavitt’s outline would require more patience from American voters and business executives than Trump’s myriad campaign rally promises to almost immediately spruce up the economic picture he inherited with a few strokes of his signature black felt pens.

The president himself has pivoted from his earlier talk of having something of a magic economic wand.

“We may have short term, some, a little pain,” he told reporters Sunday night after arriving back in the Washington area following a weekend at his Florida resort. “And people understand that.”

At the same time, Trump is, somewhat uncharacteristically, playing a long game.

“Tariffs don’t cause inflation. They cause success. Cause big success. So we’re going to have great success,” he told reporters Friday in the Oval Office, before departing for Florida. “There could be some temporary, short-term disruption, and people will understand that. I had that when I negotiated some of the good deals for the farmers, and unfortunately, those deals have been led astray by Biden and his people because they didn’t enforce the deals.”

Those comments came as his lone executive action on prices, signed on Jan. 20, gave his subordinates only hazy guidance on fighting prices.

“I hereby order the heads of all executive departments and agencies to deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker,” the document reads.

It directed officials to pursue all “appropriate actions” and to “eliminate unnecessary administrative expenses” and “eliminate counterproductive requirements,” among other things. It also featured a very Washington move, especially as Trump has vowed to “drain the swamp” and some of his lieutenants working under billionaire Elon Musk have moved to begin dismantling some federal agencies.

“Within 30 days of the date of this memorandum, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy shall report to me and every 30 days thereafter, on the status of the implementation of this memorandum,” according to the Jan. 20 order.

‘Increase your prices’

Congressional Democrats, who have otherwise struggled to find a message to counter Trump’s return to power, began last week to seize on the issue of high prices and Trump’s envisioned tariffs — which have already seen some wobbling from the president, who announced Monday he was delaying tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports.

“It (is) not some partisan overstatement to allege they are going to increase your prices and use it to finance their tax cuts for the wealthy. That is their plan. That’s how they intend to use the money from your pocket,” Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, a member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, wrote Sunday on social media.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer on Jan. 29 linked the Trump administration’s ongoing review of all federal spending and programs to still-high costs, contending that if some federal initiatives eventually were stripped of funding, prices would climb even higher.

“How is freezing all these funds going to help families pay for groceries? How is it going to make neighborhoods safer? How is it going to create new jobs? Of course, it won’t. In fact, it’s going to do the opposite,” the New York Democrat told reporters. “It will only raise costs, threaten communities, kill good-paying jobs.

“The price of eggs was $2 a year ago. It was $4 in November. It’s $5 to $6 in New York right now,” he added. “It’ll go up to $8. That’s just one small cut affecting America’s costs on something they’re really aggravated about — the high cost of the price of eggs.”

The Democratic National Committee was even more blunt in a statement last week, contending that Trump and his campaign aides never had a plan to target prices.

“Donald Trump spent his entire campaign lying about his plans to lower costs, but basic household items are already getting more expensive a week into his presidency, and economists are warning that his reckless agenda would mean ‘higher prices for everyday Americans’ on everything from groceries to electronics,” the DNC said, citing a Washington Post analysis.

Top congressional Republicans, though, have stood firmly in Trump’s corner.

“He’s doing what he said he would do. Removing dangerous illegal aliens, securing the border, standing up to terrorists,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Fox News on Monday. “He’s unleashing American energy again. He’s gotten rid of the DEI and gender ideology madness. It’s win after win after win.”

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