On Friday morning, President Donald Trump raged about the state of the economy, falsely stating that prices are falling.
“Cost, and INFLATION, were far higher under the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration, than they are now. In fact, costs under the TRUMP ADMINISTRATION are tumbling down, helped greatly by gasoline and ENERGY. Affordability is a lie when used by the Dems. It is a complete CON JOB. Thanksgiving costs are 25% lower this year than last, under Crooked Joe! We are the Party of Affordability!”
Of course, this is objectively not true. In September’s Consumer Price Index report, which was the last full measure of inflation before the government shutdown began, showed inflation ticked up 0.3 percent.
But Trump is trying to commit an act of political acrobatics after Democrats swept every major election last week based on one word: affordability, which Trump has criticized. And it reveals that Trump is now facing the same doom loop on inflation that his predecessor Joe Biden faced that ultimately doomed his presidency.
An AP-NORC poll released on Thursday showed that Trump’s approval is now at a dismal 36 percent and 62 percent disapprove of his performance as president. His numbers are even worse when it comes to the economy, where approval sits at 33 percent.
Trump largely won because of the economic malaise people felt in 2024 after years of rising inflation. Biden for his part tried selling that the economy was great, even when people felt the sting of the price of groceries and gas. He even tried to co-opt The Wall Street Journal’s derisive term “Bidenomics” as his own.
It ended in disaster because instead of convincing people that the economy was getting better, he wound up owning all of the worst aspects of the economy.
Rather than pointing to the economy’s real successes like reduced unemployment and wage growth while also acknowldging the genuine problems of inflation, Biden’s team painted a hunky-dory picture. When Kamala Harris said she could not name anything that she would do differently, it doomed her presidential campaign as well.
Now Trump is trying to use the same spin as Biden. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the October Consumer Price Index, which tracks inflation, might never be released, Leavitt faulted the government shutdown, which ended Wednesday.
More pain is likely to come. A report from Goldman Sachs showed last month that companies have only passed 37 percent of the cost from Trump’s tariffs down to consumers. Companies so far have likely hoped that Trump would broker new trade deals or they lived by the acronym of TACO or “Trump always chckens out. But soon, they won’t be able to shoulder the cost and pass even more onto the consumer.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has tried to calm down markets and told Fox & Friends this week that the administration would slash tariffs on coffee, bananas and other fruits that cannot be grown in the United States.
But this would not be an issue for the Trump administration had Trump not done across-the-board tariffs which caused the price of coffee to jump by double digits.
There’s also a hidden trap-door on affordability and cost that should make Trump sweat through his bronzer: health care. For the past month and a half, Democrats blocked efforts to reopen the government in the name of forcing Republicans to renew enhanced Covid-era tax credits for the Affordable Care Act’s insurance market.
They even found an unlikely ally in Marjorie Taylor Greene, the MAGA firebrand, who criticized the fact premiums might double or in some cases triple.
Well, the government’s reopen and while Senate Republicans pledged to vote on the subsidies in December, there’s no guarantee 13 Republicans will join Democrats to extend them, and House Speaker Mike Johnson would still have to put it up for a vote.
Trump’s entire existence on the political scene has been an example of defying the laws of political physics. But a president can only defy the gravity of a bad economy for so long.
And the American voters is an consumer first and foremost who will not tolerate increased prices and a sluggish labor market. While Trump cannot run for re-election, angry voters could easily elect Democrats to the House and even the Senate, hampering his presidency or erase his agenda. He just needs to give Joe Biden a call.
