The left-wing dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors may have just dissolved, but that hasn’t stopped outlets from spewing its anti-Trump propaganda whenever they get the chance. Take this headline:
Tis the Season for Price Hikes: Popular Holiday Gifts Climb 26 Percent Under Trump
Of course, the study was laced with cherry-picked figures to bolster its narrative, but don’t expect the media to be forthcoming about it or its explicit left-wing bias.
Politico, the New York Post and NPR-affiliate Buffalo Toronto Public Media (BTPM) were like bees buzzing around honey over the supposed findings of a study spearheaded by Groundwork Collaborative, a leftist policy group fiscally-sponsored by the George Soros-financed New Venture Fund, which was until November 2025 managed by Arabella Advisors, before the latter’s rebrand to Sunflower Services. The group is notoriously anti-Trump.
The terms “Arabella Advisors” and “New Venture Fund” were never disclosed within any of the aforementioned outlets’ reporting on Groundwork’s so-called “analysis.” The Soros empire has poured at least $88,704,062 into New Venture Fund’s coffers between 2016 and 2024, further emphasizing the blatant bias that undergirds the network in which Groundwork operates. Another of Arabella’s Soros-funded nonprofits, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, spent $410 million to defeat former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. And one of the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s radical pet projects, Fix Our Senate, was behind a push to kill the Senate filibuster.
Seems like important context, doesn’t it? Apparently not for the media that mindlessly regurgitated Groundwork’s talking points.
Post reporter Lisa Fickenscher proclaimed December 10 that “Holiday gifts are 26% more expensive this year thanks to tariffs — these presents will hit your wallet the most.” Fickenscher snarked in her lede sentence, “Prices for holiday gifts are going through the roof this year — and it’s thanks to President Trump’s tariffs, according to a report.” Fickenscher mentioned nothing about Groundwork’s left-wing bias or that it is part of the insidious Arabella network.
Politico also shoe-horned Groundwork’s findings into its December 11 Playbook roundup as if it was an established fact: “The latest report from Groundwork Collaborative out today has prices up 26 percent this holiday season.” BTPM also wielded Groundwork’s propaganda to fear-monger that the findings would lead “to tough decisions for people in the checkout line.”
Once again, neither Arabella nor the New Venture Fund were mentioned.
Groundwork based its entire thesis on just 70 gift recommendations from New York magazine’s "Strategist" guide based on prices taken from Amazon listings for each item to claim overall holiday prices increased 26 percent from 2024 under President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda.
Here are some of the glaring issues: First, Amazon uses a dynamic pricing algorithm which “continuously changes prices” based on a number of factors outside underlying costs, according to the Sellbery blog. In fact, Sellbery noted that “the tags on the [Amazon] products may alter up to 20% a few times a day.” This doesn’t really do much for maintaining reliable data, especially if the goal was to screech how prices were just generally rising under Trump.
Secondly, the Strategist guide Groundwork wielded is not necessarily reflective of the broader holiday economy. For example, Groundwork claimed that apparel and footwear are seeing major price hikes as a result of Trump’s tariffs. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the latest data on record (September) shows that apparel prices have in fact decreased -0.1 percent year-over-year. So take your pick: official BLS data or some random sample of volatile Amazon prices between November 2024 and November 2025?
Heartland Institute Vice president Justin Haskins even noted in a November 19 Hill op-ed that “So far, Trump’s tariffs are not driving inflation. In fact, some goods that are affected by tariffs have actually become more affordable.” He continued, “That doesn’t mean tariffs won’t cause higher prices in the months or years ahead. But right now, that’s not what’s happening.”
Unsurprisingly, Groundwork’s analysis doesn’t even tell the whole story about the holiday economy, and why would it? Groundwork claimed based on polling from left-wing organization Data for Progress, another Soros grantee, that 41 percent of Americans were buying fewer gifts this year to soften the blow from the price hikes.
But The National Retail Foundation projected in November (figures) that retail sales would explode 3.7 percent to 4.2 percent in the final two months of the year over 2024. In fact, the NRF estimated, “That translates to total spending between $1.01 trillion and $1.02 trillion. By comparison, last year’s holiday sales rose 4.3% over 2023 to reach $976.1 billion.”
NRF President Matthew Shay praised how American consumers “remain fundamentally strong and continue to drive U.S. economic activity.” Though NRF Chief Economist Mark Mathews claimed tariffs “induced an uptick in consumer prices,” he caveated that by arguing that “retailers have tried to hold the line on prices given the uncertainty about trade policies.”
The NRF’s survey for the projected average consumer spending on holiday gifts, food, decorations and other seasonal items per person was $890.49. “The amount is the second highest in the survey’s 23-year history,” NRF concluded. Oof.
Apparently media outlets forgot what the meaning of a “reliable source” is.
