WA residents paying nearly $1,000 more due to Trump economic policies, DNC says
Inflation under the administration of President Donald Trump has amounted to a nearly $1,000 price hike for Washingtonians, according to data shared Nov. 19 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
The Evergreen State’s $948 cost increase was the sixth-highest in the nation, the report shows. Democrats on the U.S. Joint Economic Committee (JEC) projected that families across the U.S. are paying $706 more on average since Trump returned to the White House in January.
DNC Chair Ken Martin told McClatchy in an emailed statement that Washington residents are on the hook for the president’s “disastrous economic agenda.”
“Monthly costs are rising, and families in Washington are paying more because Trump and his Republican lackeys don’t have any plan to make life more affordable for working people in this country,” Martin said.
The White House did not immediately return McClatchy’s request for comment.
This comes as many families in Washington and nationwide are struggling to cover the cost of basic essentials, including housing, groceries and child care. Democrats accuse Trump of breaking campaign promises related to affordability and lowering inflation.
The analysis was done using the latest Consumer Price Index data on prices nationally and in each Census division. It also used JEC Republicans’ state-level data on average household consumption in each state, and calculated the cumulative jump in monthly costs from February through September, comparing it with data from January.
Only five other states saw higher price jumps, according to the report: California ($1,112); Alaska ($1,107); Hawaii ($1,075); Colorado ($1,062) and Utah ($1,030).
Here in Washington state, residents are feeling the effects of the president’s “chaotic and harmful policies,” Gov. Bob Ferguson told McClatchy in a written statement.
“As the president pursues unlawful tariffs and tax breaks for billionaires, Washington families are being left behind,” the Democrat said.
No surprise that Washington State Republican Party Chairman Jim Walsh disagrees.
Walsh said that the JEC–Minority group is a political entity using a few Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers paired with much “selective spin.” He said Washington state’s policies, including the Climate Commitment Act, are hurting families’ bottom-line more, and that recent tax increases are hitting bank accounts hard.
“We don’t have to rely on cooked numbers from D.C. to know what Washington households are feeling,” he continued in a text. “All we need to do is look closer to home at Olympia.”
McClatchy asked Professor Todd Schaefer, who chairs Central Washington University’s political science department, to weigh in on the report’s data and findings. He said via email that since there’s an apparent lack of direct state-level data, report-writers are partly devising estimates based on groups of states or Census sub-regions, plus changes in inflation for goods.
Schaefer wasn’t sure whether the state-level data is fully accurate, or if $948 is the exact correct price increase for the state. For example, he said Washington could have ranked higher in part because it’s in the same region as California and Alaska.
At the same time, Schaefer noted that the state has seen higher costs because of its position geographically, trade relations with countries like China and Canada, and economic base. In fairness, he added, the report-writers applied some of the same methodology that JEC Republicans did to make similar claims under then-President Joe Biden, so “there is an element of ‘turnabout is fair play,’ hoisting them by their own petard, tit-for-tat, etc.”
Stephen Reed, spokesperson for the Washington State Democratic Party, underscored Trump’s affordability-focused campaign messaging. He said the report shows that the president has abdicated his responsibility to Americans.
Washington is among the most trade-dependent states in the nation. Reed said that means the impacts of “poor trade policy” are especially felt here, hiking prices and hurting pocketbooks.
“It doesn’t matter whether you’re a millionaire or whether you’re trying to scrape together food for your family,” he said. “Everyone is feeling the pinch from this — and obviously those on the lower end of the economic spectrum are feeling it far more acutely.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2025 at 7:02 AM with the headline "WA residents paying nearly $1,000 more due to Trump economic policies, DNC says."
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