“Hoax.” “Con job.” “Scam.”
Those are just a few of the ways that President Donald Trump has described the affordability crisis in the United States. And it’s the opposite of how Americans — including those who voted for him three times over the last decade — would describe it.
For all his faults, Trump normally has pretty good instincts on public opinion. He knows which buttons to press to rile up his base and which subjects to feign indifference to, even though he doesn’t always follow up.
But his handling of affordability has been off-key from the start. He won a second term by slamming Joe Biden on the issue, then implemented policies such as sweeping tariffs that made it worse, seemingly acknowledged it was still a problem and then reversed himself and called it all fake. It’s baffling.
Trump has never needed to worry about high prices.
Part of the disconnect here is that Trump has never needed to worry about high prices. He’s been rich his whole life, never wanting for anything. It’s likely that he hasn’t gone grocery shopping in decades, if ever. So while he may know inflation is a problem, he doesn’t feel it the way a regular person does.
The problem started almost immediately after the election. In one of his first big interviews, he told TIME magazine that he might not live up to his campaign pledge to bring down prices immediately: “I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”
He’s absolutely right. It is extremely hard, especially because presidents have a lot less power over prices than your average American believes. He made the job even more difficult with his grandiose promises and disregard for the separation of powers.
It’s hard enough to convince voters that the president isn’t to blame for all their problems. But when you ran on the idea that you would be an all-powerful monarch in office, you’ve only made the problem worse.
While Trump is suffering the loss in voter approval, though, it’s Republicans who will pay the price.
A new Politico poll found that 37% of folks who voted for Trump in November 2024 say the cost of living is the worst they can ever remember.
In a typical administration, the president and his allies might try to change course.
In a typical administration, the president and his allies in Congress might look at their recent string of losses and close calls in off-year and special elections and try to change course.
But that’s not Trump’s way.
Sarah Matthews, who worked in the first Trump administration during the 2020 election, said that getting Trump to say something that was politically beneficial for him, or the party, that went against his own instincts was a “constant frustration for us.”
“There would be times where I was helping prep the then-press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, for briefings, and I would say, ‘Well, this is what we really should be saying, because this will help him with this group of voters.’ I remember many times Kayleigh telling me, ‘I can’t go out there and say that at the podium because that’s not what he wants me to say,’” Matthews told me this week.
If you talk to current and former Trump aides and allies, as I have, they will tell you that keeping Trump on message is near impossible. And they’ve clearly tried.
Because every once in a while, Trump will reveal that someone told him prices were too high. He’s announced an “affordability tour,” starting in Pennsylvania. The administration has also backed off some of the tariffs, highlighted its new “Trump accounts,” an investment program for children under 18, and even floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage.
But Trump didn’t reverse nearly enough of the tariffs to have much of an impact, and neither the Trump accounts nor a 50-year mortgage are going to help anyone struggling to buy groceries right now.
Democrats have done well in recent campaigns by putting high costs at the top of their agenda.
Democrats have done well in recent campaigns by putting high costs at the top of their agenda, and Republican Rep.-elect Matt Van Epps of Tennessee staved off a loss by talking about the issue.
The best strategy for Republicans in Congress might be to cut Trump loose and run their own campaigns focused on affordability, and there is no way the president would let them get away with that.
For years, members of the party, especially in Congress, who have even lightly criticized a policy outcome of Trump’s have found themselves on the opposite end of a social media post, or death threats from his most fervent supporters.
The midterm elections aren’t for 11 months. A lot might happen in that time. But it’s unlikely that prices will come down enough to solve this political problem for Republicans, and Trump has already given Democrats enough bad sound bites to run a slew of brutal ads.
Trump has been successful in business and in politics by convincing people of things that aren’t really true. But voters looking at another $200 grocery bill can’t be persuaded otherwise.
