When running for president last year, Donald Trump promised to bring prices down and deliver a booming economy. This, you don’t need me to tell you, has not happened. The cost of beef is at a record high, while health insurance costs are surging. The hiring rate hasn’t been this slow since the Great Recession.
Now that Trump is in the White House, Republicans are making the same mistake as Democrats during Joe Biden’s presidency: trying to convince voters that the economy is better than it is. It didn’t work for Democrats, and it won’t work for Republicans and Trump.
The former reality TV star cannot, in fact, bear very much reality.
During Biden’s presidency, supply chain disruptions that started during the Covid-19 pandemic continued through Biden’s term, and corporations exploited the situation to push price increases. Democrats were late to acknowledge the painful reality of inflation, but you can’t fool Americans when it comes to their wallets. Fifty-two percent of voters told Gallup the economy was “extremely important” to their vote — the highest share since 2008 and the Great Recession.
In 2024, unlike 2008, that priority benefited Republicans. But count me skeptical that Trump and his allies will acknowledge voters’ pain either. The former reality TV star cannot, in fact, bear very much reality.
When the August job numbers came in weak, the president’s response was to claim the numbers were “rigged” by government workers looking to sabotage his presidency and fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Inflation? “Prices are WAY DOWN in the USA,” Trump posted on Truth Social this summer. “Just out: No Inflation!!!” he said last month. In reality, Friday’s new consumer price index report showed yearly inflation was accelerating.
Americans are not fooled by Trump’s reality-show version of the economy. Polling released this week by Blueprint shows large pluralities of Americans blame Republicans for rising food, health and electricity prices, as well as overall inflation. In the latest Economist/YouGov tracking poll, 53% of voters say the economy is “getting worse” — a similar level of pessimism to Biden’s tenure. A new Gallup poll gives Democrats a 47% to 43% lead on the question of “which political party do you think will do a better job of keeping the country prosperous?” — Democrats’ biggest lead on that question since 2012.
And, in this case, there is reason to point the finger at Trump and Republicans. The “big, beautiful bill” showered tax cuts on the 1%, while cutting back services that working- and middle-class Americans need, such as Affordable Care Act subsidies. The on-again, off-again tariff policy has created rampant uncertainty and given corporations further cover to raise prices.
So why are Republicans now making the same bet that backfired on Democrats? In part, because they may feel they have to. Americans will always blame the person and party in charge. As Harry Truman famously observed, the buck — in this case, literally — stops with the person in charge, who in this case resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
There is other Trump-inflicted damage that will likely come home to roost.
But it’s also true that for the wealthiest Americans — a label applies to many high-ranking members of both political parties — things are still good. Flush with stock market gains, they continue to splurge on high-end hotels, even as everyone else is having an increasingly hard time paying for basic necessities.
Economists are increasingly discussing our bifurcated economy, which they sometimes call a “K-shaped” economy, with dismay. Many recessions — such as in 2007 and 1990 — began as sustained weakness affecting lower-income Americans that then filtered upward. And we’ve got significant evidence of similar weakness in lower- and middle-income households. You don’t need an advanced degree, for instance, to know a situation in which a growing portion of the populace is turning to “buy now, pay later” loans to pay for groceries, as auto delinquencies climb and visits from the repo man climb, cannot end well. Households suddenly not eligible for Affordable Care Act subsidies are reporting soaring premium bills — in some cases, increases of more than $1,000 per month. There is other Trump-inflicted damage that will likely come home to roost. Medicaid cutbacks to the states will filter downward. And his campaign promise to bring down utility bills was no match for his determination to stick it to environmentalists. White House rollbacks of clean energy initiatives are a factor in the nation’s surging household utility bills, up 10% since he took office, while Trump has studiously ignored the issue of Americans getting stuck with the bill for the vast amounts of electricity used by artificial intelligence data centers. True, it is not all dire — it never is. Overall, consumer spending is up, and higher-income spending continues strong, boosting the economy. But it’s worth remembering that during the Great Recession, too, luxury spending — not to mention the stock market — held up for a time, till, suddenly, it did not. Trump, our wealthiest president ever, appears all but blind to that truth. When the economy finally goes wrong — whether the AI bubble finally collapses, or private credit defaults eat away at the stock market, or something else entirely — it will mean political pain for the GOP. Yet the real pain will be felt not by politicians, but average Americans.
Helaine R. Olen
Helaine R. Olen is the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry" and a co-author of "The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn't Have to Be Complicated." She has been a columnist for The Washington Post and Slate, and her work has also appeared in numerous other publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic. 
