This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s partnership with NOTUS, a nonpartisan news organization that covers government and politics with the fresh eyes of early career journalists and the expertise of veteran reporters.
On the eve of the presidential election last year in Reading, Pennsylvania, then-candidate Donald Trump vowed to slash prices for millions of Americans infuriated by inflation under the Biden administration and craving a change.
“We’re going to make America wealthy again, and we’re going to make America affordable — we have to get the prices down,” Trump said.
Now, one year later and about 85 miles away in the Poconos, the president on Tuesday will kick off a tour to tout his economic policies, as a growing number of Americans say he hasn’t done enough to tackle high prices. Trump’s approval numbers have tumbled as a result.
“In politics, perception is reality. That’s the problem for Trump,” said Stephen Moore, an economist outside the White House who talks to Trump. “The perception that things are more expensive is really affecting the way people feel about Trump’s performance. If people feel they’re poor, they’re poor with respect to how they’re going to vote.”
Moore noted that while prices in some areas, most notably gas, are down in parts of the country compared to this time last year, there is a messaging problem to get people to both see and feel it.
From housing to groceries to inflation, polls suggest that Americans are not feeling the improvements that Trump is touting. In a Harvard CAPS/ Harris poll released Monday, 55% of voters said they trust Trump and the GOP, though most of them said Trump is losing the battle on inflation. Trump’s approval numbers also spell trouble: The most recent Gallup polling places him at a 36% approval rating, the lowest of his second term.
According to a poll from Politico, released last week but taken in November, 46% of respondents said the cost of living in the U.S. is worse than they can ever remember it being, including 37% of respondents who voted for Trump, and nearly half said that Trump holds a majority of the responsibility.
A Nasdaq analysis from last week reported that grocery items like beef steaks, coffee and cereal are among some of the products that have jumped in prices since January.
The president, Moore said, should use the message in Pennsylvania: “What we’re doing is working. It’s going to pay big dividends to you. Stay the course.”
That seems to be the plan: A White House spokesperson told NOTUS the administration will continue to underscore the work they’re doing to deliver on the economy, pointing to efforts to make prescription drugs cheaper and investments they say are pouring into the U.S.
“The Democrats caused the affordability problem and we are the ones that are fixing it. So it’s a very simple statement,” Trump said Monday in the Cabinet Room, dropping his former statement that affordability is a “con job” and a “hoax” cooked up by his opponents.
Tuesday will be the first time since May that Trump gives a campaign-style rally in Pennsylvania, a swing state he flipped in 2024. It’s the first stop of an extended campaign to educate American voters on what he has done so far on the issue and point to savings that they said will take effect in 2026, though the White House has not announced additional stops.
It comes as the administration says the president’s renewed focus on the economy is not a pivot — arguing that it is a continuation of Trump’s Day One emphasis on the issue. But despite officials’ insistence, Trump has recently drawn criticism, even from his own base, that he has spent more time focused on foreign affairs than domestic issues.
“I don’t question that Biden’s spending triggered inflation, but I think that the trade agenda has not helped to solve it,” said Marc Short, the former chief of staff to Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence. “I think the president deserves credit for an energy policy that’s driven energy prices down, but in some ways, that only exacerbates how miserable the trade policy is.”
Though Americans and U.S. officials have been sounding the alarm about the squeeze of high prices for months, things have reached a fever pitch after New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned explicitly on affordability, won on the same night Republicans suffered losses throughout the country. It has since become the preeminent issue facing the Trump administration.
It’s clear both the White House and rank-and-file Republicans see the problem.
In a series of talking points, sent by the Republican National Committee to surrogates last week and obtained by NOTUS, the party urged pundits to blame the president’s predecessor for the prices, arguing in its messaging that Trump is “repairing the mess” created under the last administration and “fighting every day to bring down prices and reverse the damage that Joe Biden and the Democrats did to the economy.”
Advice is pouring in, from outside advisors and the like to the president’s team, as some in Trump’s orbit push him to take a more empathetic tone with Americans who are struggling under the weight of high prices.
“It’s the old Bill Clinton line, remember, ‘I feel your pain,’” Moore said. “I think Trump will probably start making the point that I care, and I feel your pain when you go to the grocery store.”
Others said he simply needs to steer clear of a strategy from the last administration that attempted to remind people how well the economy was doing, though they never quite felt it.
“The bottom line is that inflation is sticky as are prices,” said a former Trump official. “He needs to avoid the Biden problem and actually acknowledge that some items remain expensive and that his administration is working on the problem.”
Though the president’s language hasn’t changed, in recent weeks, the administration has pulled a number of levers apparently aimed at addressing prices and other economic issues.
The White House announced on Dec. 3 that it would roll back fuel efficiency standards to make vehicles more affordable and approve the production and sale of “tiny cars,” a more affordable vehicle option that is popular in Europe and Asia. On Monday, the president also announced a $12 billion bailout for farmers, derived largely from tariff revenue.
“From the campaign trail to the Oval Office, President Trump has consistently – and correctly – pointed out how Joe Biden unleashed a generational economic disaster. This undeniable fact hasn’t stopped Democrats from shamelessly trying to harp on the affordability crisis that they created in the first place,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told NOTUS in a statement.
But Trump has sent mixed messages on the issue. Though aides have acknowledged it as a pressure point, Trump himself continues to refer to affordability as a con job. The same White House official clarified that the president wants and is working for prices to come down: The con job, they said, is Democrats attacking the Trump White House over an issue it feels the Biden administration created.
Nearly a year into his second term, the issue continues to rage: Democrats are pinning the blame squarely on the Trump administration.
“Trump and his administration are dismissing Americans’ concerns by telling them to have ‘patience’ and calling affordability a ‘hoax.’ Meanwhile, everyday Americans are stretching their paychecks further and further to make ends meet — they deserve solutions, not bullshitting,” Democratic National Committee Communications Director Rosemary Boeglin told NOTUS in a statement.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski was critical of Trump calling affordability a “hoax” and told NOTUS she thinks people on Trump’s team should try to speak with everyday Americans.
“I would go in the grocery stores. I’d be anonymous. I’d be like that mystery shopper, and I would just be talking to people, regular people in the grocery store, about what they’re facing,” she said. “Because if he’s going out and saying that, you know, the affordability thing is a hoax — it’s not a hoax, he needs to come and talk to the people that I’m talking to. And so really, listening to people is kind of our job.”