US President Donald Trump, in the Oval Office last week, announces plans to weaken fuel efficiency and emissions rules for cars and trucks. Photo / Carolyn Van Houten, The Washington Post
United States President Donald Trump has said medical drug prices are falling by as much as 1500%, a mathematical impossibility.
He has declared himself “the affordability president”, while dismissing the affordability issue as “a con job by the Democrats”.
Trump also vows that good times are coming.
He has predicted that petrol prices, which now hover around US$3 a gallon (3.7 litres), will plummet to US$2.
He has promised Americans US$2000 refund cheques from the revenue raised by tariffs.
He has suggested that “in the not-too-distant future”, no one will have to pay income tax.
This flurry of sometimes extravagant claims comes amid a growing Republican fear, fuelled by recent election results, that high prices could set the stage for a Democratic sweep in next year’s Midterms.
So far, there is little evidence that Trump’s urgent attempt to shift the economic storyline is working.
“Any Republican who refuses to admit we have an affordability problem is not listening to the American people,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) said.
“It’s real because the American people think it’s real. I cannot overstate that - in a free country it’s the people who define what is real, not the politicians.”
Gingrich said Republicans need to quickly adopt an “affordability agenda” and argued that Trump should dedicate his next State of the Union address to the subject.
“Psychologically, he hates to admit being in a hole,” Gingrich said. “His whole career is built around forcing the positive.”
Trump’s plight is a striking turnabout.
In last year’s campaign, Trump scored political points by highlighting Americans’ inflation concerns, and President Joe Biden faced the almost impossible task of convincing voters they were not as bad off as they thought.
Strategists of both parties note that Trump - who has often seemed to defy the laws of politics - is struggling with the affordability issue as he has with few others.
The US President shrugged off criticism after he accepted a luxury plane from Qatar, pardoned unsavoury figures, and demolished a third of the White House, for example - episodes that might be devastating to another politician.
This seems different. Alarm bells have gone off for Republicans since Democrats swept last month’s off-year elections, then performed better than usual in last Wednesday’s House race in a traditionally Republican Tennessee district.
A Democrat could capture the Miami mayor’s office on Wednesday in heavily Republican Florida.
“He often exists in an alternative reality that many of his followers are happy to follow him into, but the affordability issue is kryptonite for him, because even his most devoted followers know which way is up when it comes to prices,” said Jared Bernstein, who chaired Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers.
“He may be able to convince people of his alternative vision in lots of different areas, but not this one.”
The White House said Trump is fully tuned in to Americans’ economic challenges, as evidenced by his political success.
“President Trump was resoundingly re-elected precisely because he understands how Joe Biden’s generational inflation crisis was leaving American families behind,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.
“Putting this crisis behind us has been a Day One priority for President Trump, and this priority has guided the Administration’s economic policymaking - from slashing costly [fuel] regulations to securing historic drug pricing deals.
“The Administration will continue to deliver economic relief and highlight our turnaround from the Biden economic disaster.”
Still, the White House appears to sense political danger.
In recent weeks, Trump has eased tariffs on Brazilian coffee, fruit and beef in an effort to lower grocery costs.
He has rolled back fuel efficiency rules in hopes of making cars less expensive.
He has announced a deal with pharmaceutical companies to cut the price of weight-loss drugs.
He has floated the idea of 50-year mortgages, which could lower homeowners’ monthly payments.
“My first term, we built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and now we’re doing it again,” Trump said in a November 17 speech.
“I think it’s going to be something that nobody has ever seen before.”
The message does not seem to be resonating.
A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 62% of Americans disapproved of Trump’s economic performance, while 37% approved.
Those are notable figures for a president whose political strength rests in part on his image as an ingenious businessman and financial maven.
Trump’s rhetoric has increasingly veered between insisting that he has sharply lowered prices and dismissing the entire issue as fraudulent.
“I think affordability is the greatest con job,” Trump said at the White House recently - prompting Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer to post: “Expect to see this clip in approximately 1 million ads over the next the next 11 months”.
Brent Buchanan, chief executive of Cygnal, a Republican polling firm, said the White House has not settled on a consistent, empathetic message.
“The biggest piece is message discipline and acknowledging how people feel - not telling them that things are affordable and you shouldn’t be complaining,” Buchanan said.
“If your message is Venezuela one day, Ukraine the next, telling them things are affordable, telling them Democrats made up affordability … voters then become concerned that you are not worried about what they are worried about.”
Trump’s advisers have tried for months to nudge the President to talk more about affordability, urging him to tout signs of economic progress despite stubborn inflation, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy.
But Trump’s mentions of reduced egg and fuel prices, declining mortgage rates, and record-high stock market days have been accompanied by frequent denials that economic conditions remain difficult for average families.
The White House has begun planning presidential trips to swing states so Trump can tout his efforts to improve economic conditions, according to two White House officials.
On Wednesday, he will travel to northeast Pennsylvania - Biden’s home turf and a political battleground that has shifted towards Republicans in recent elections.
Trump also might fit in an additional stop before spending the last two weeks of the year at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, the advisers said.
Data on prices has been spotty since the recent government shutdown, and the limited information is not promising.
The Government’s last report on inflation, released in October, showed it had heated up to 3% annually, a pace not seen since January.
Prices of some items have gone down, as Trump frequently notes. Petrol at the pump recently dipped below US$3 a gallon, and the price of eggs also has fallen.
Many prices have risen by double digits since pre-pandemic times, and Americans are wrestling with major costs that have been escalating for decades, such as housing, healthcare and education.
Stephen Moore, a former Trump economic adviser, said the data shows that Americans’ median family income has been rising recently, so things are actually becoming more affordable. People naturally focus on items that are getting more expensive, he said.
“I find when I give speeches or talk to family members who are Democrats, I’ll say: ‘Look at the numbers. They look pretty good!’ And people get angry,” Moore said.
“They say: ‘How can you be that insensitive? When was the last time you were in a grocery store?’ To tell people everything is okay I don’t think is working.”
Trump’s challenge will be greater the more voters connect their rising daily costs to his actions, especially the tariffs that are a centrepiece of his economic policy.
Douglas Elmendorf, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said Trump is making things worse not just by imposing global tariffs, but also by opposing expanded healthcare subsidies and browbeating the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.
“I don’t see this Administration doing much to bring down prices, on balance,” said Elmendorf, a top economic official under President Bill Clinton.
“People expect too much of our president in terms of bringing down prices. But they should expect presidents to push policies that move in the right direction.”
The President’s struggle to address Americans’ cost of living bears an unmistakable resemblance to that of Biden, who is often disparaged by Trump.
Throughout his four-year term, Biden worked to soften the impact of high prices on the economy and on his political standing, never fully succeeding.
Shortly after taking office, Biden dismissed inflation as “transitory”, a byproduct of the economy’s rapid reopening after Covid-19.
Then he blamed “Putin’s price hike”, suggesting the Russia-Ukraine war was responsible.
Ultimately, he embraced the term “Bidenomics”, arguing that even with stubbornly high prices, his economy was impressive.
None of this landed, and candidate Trump took full advantage, promising to lower costs immediately upon entering the White House.
“Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make America affordable again,” he said at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Now Trump and his aides have turned to blaming Biden for the economy’s current problems and saying no one could be expected to improve things that fast.
“If you look at every affordability crisis that’s confronting the American people today, it is traceable to a problem caused by Joe Biden and congressional Democrats,” Vice-President JD Vance said at a recent Cabinet meeting. “… It would be preposterous to fix every problem caused over the last four years in just 10 months.”
Some conservatives say they are struck that Trump is making the same mistakes he exploited so effectively just last year, especially his suggestion that the economy is better than many Americans feel it to be.
“When you consider that he won re-election in 2024 in large part because of policy mistakes by President Biden that led to an increase in inflation and prices … it’s almost eerie,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
“It’s like they’re using the same playbook. They’re both blaming corporations, denying the problem, saying, ‘Look at high employment.’ I don’t know a better word for it than weird.”
In recent weeks, Democrats have notched electoral wins, suggesting to strategists in both parties that, for now at least, they are on course to make significant pick-ups in Congress next November.
In Tennessee last week, Democrat Aftyn Behn lost to Republican Matt Van Epps by nine percentage points, less than half of Trump’s 22-point edge in the district last year.
A month earlier, Democrats not only captured governor’s mansions in Virginia and New Jersey but also won hundreds of lower-profile state and local races, some in places the GOP has dominated for decades.
The affordability issue is especially potent because it resonates with the less-ideological swing voters who often determine elections.
“If you are Maga, you fully trust the president,” said Buchanan, the Republican pollster.
“But what Republicans have to realise is that Maga alone, and even traditional Republicans alone, are not enough to get you across the finish line in an election.”
- Natalie Allison contributed to this report.
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