Trump’s midterm warning rests on a false inflation claim

The definition matters. For goods alone, the largest deficit in the same table came in 2025, during Trump’s second term, at about $1.241 trillion. These are annual figures in current dollars: they do not establish records after inflation adjustment or relative to the size of the economy. [6]

Energy prices also rose sharply under Biden. BLS recorded a 41.6% increase in its energy index in the year to June 2022. But Trump identifies neither a particular energy-price series nor whether his historical comparison allows for inflation. [2] [3]

Different energy prices can follow different paths. Energy Information Administration figures put average residential electricity prices at 15.04 US cents per kilowatt-hour in 2022, 16.48 in 2024 and 17.30 in 2025, without inflation adjustment. Those are unit prices, not household bills. Higher later prices do not disprove a record set earlier, but neither a record for one fuel nor an electricity comparison settles Trump’s broad claim about energy prices generally. [5]

Border encounters are not an immigration total

The post offers no source or calculation for its “25 million people”. It also does not define whether that figure includes legal entries. [2]

A Biden-critical factsheet published by the House Homeland Security Committee in October 2024 cited more than 10.8 million nationwide Customs and Border Protection encounters during fiscal years 2021–2024, including more than 8.72 million at the south-west border. The regional figure is already included in the national total; the two cannot be added together. Those fiscal years ran from 1 October 2020 to 30 September 2024, rather than matching Biden’s presidency exactly. [8] [7]

A February 2025 analysis published by the St Louis Fed describes encounters as interactions with border officials over attempted unauthorised entry. Some involve people allowed to remain temporarily while seeking humanitarian protection. Contacts with officials are not a tally of distinct people admitted or still living in the country, and the researchers separately estimated people who evaded CBP. They found sharp increases after 2020, followed by a steady downward trend beginning in summer 2024. [7]

These figures do not substantiate 25 million people entering the country. Nor can the encounter total be substituted for a complete count of all legal and illegal arrivals: they measure different things.

Trump made his voting appeal explicit in a separate post later that evening: “YOU MUST VOTE REPUBLICAN!” [12]

At the federal level, however, the 3 November election puts all 435 House seats and roughly a third of the Senate up for election, not the presidency. Democratic gains could change the lawmaking majorities while Trump remained in the White House. That distinction limits his analogy: even a genuine Biden-era trade record does not establish that a change in congressional control would reproduce the economic and border outcomes he predicts. [10] [11]