Sometimes a picture, or in this case a video, is worth 1000 words. But unlike King Canute, who knew his words could not hold back the incoming tide, Trump really seems to believe that his bluster can surmount the reality of more and more middle and lower income consumers feeling the crunch as medical insurance/healthcare, housing, and auto costs keep rising, with little relief on other fronts.
Admittedly, Biden did sit still while a CNN reporter rattled off figures showing that the economy was not in great shape before Biden gave a reflexive denial, as opposed to interrupting her to name call. But the substance is the same:
Biden looks shocked as CNN host Erin Burnett reels off a list of stats detailing how bad the economy is. Biden claims he's already "turned it around" and that every poll showing Americans favouring Trump on the economy is wrong. Full report here: https://t.co/smaN0DjOVD pic.twitter.com/K2wTAwdrse
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) May 9, 2024
Insultingly, Trump is specifically trying to deny the proposition that his tariffs are making the inflation picture worse. Try telling that to small businesses, many of whom have had to scramble and have had little success in finding domestic alternatives to foreign suppliers. No wonder the word “con” comes so easily from his lips. It’s an exercise in projection.
A new NBER study found that the initial impact of tariffs was to increase the reported rate of inflation by 0.7%. From Money:
The annual inflation rate for August — which was 2.9% — would have been 2.2% without tariffs, the researchers said, putting the U.S. “much closer to the Federal Reserve’s inflation target” of 2%. Instead, the costs for all sorts of everyday items, including goods produced domestically, have gone in the opposite direction due to tariffs.
“Prices began rising immediately after the broader tariff measures announced in early March and continued to increase gradually over subsequent months,” the researchers said.
Labor Department data shows that inflation had been cooling for several consecutive months at the start of the year before Trump implemented broad tariffs.
Note the rate of annual inflation continued to increase, reaching 3.0% in September. And back to Trump’s Biden scapegoating:
Inflation was 2.9% on Biden’s last day in office. https://t.co/JLI3OC0e6V
— Maine (@TheMaineWonk) December 2, 2025
To highlight what citizens are upset about when they invoke “affordability,” it is not just the up and downs they’ve experienced in the last year but the trajectory over time. Covid produced a huge cost shock. Even if the increase from there have moderated, the new baseline has strained many households. And those at the top don’t get it, because real solutions call for redistribution, as in a reduction in rentierism, from medical insurance and pharma to car costs to housing to higher education…this list goes on. So the Trumps and Bidens and their minions are reduced to variants of “Let them eat cake” or in Trump’s case, crapified Walmart Thanksgiving packages.
But Trump’s increased lashing out may not be dementia but that this self-imagined Colossus bestride the world finding there are other tides he can’t turn. A new round of poll results show his net disapproval rate continuing to increase. From the New Republic in Only One President Was Less Popular Than Trump Is Right Now: Poll:
CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten….cited a recent Gallup poll that saw Trump’s net approval rating sink to -24 percent from -1 percent in January. “We’re talking about a drop of over 20 points in the wrong direction for the president of the United States,” the analyst said.
The only president who was less popular than Trump at this point in his second term? Richard Nixon, who had an approval rating of -36 points just a few months before he resigned from office. “Anywhere you look this is the second-worst for a president of either party in their second term dating all the way back since the 1940s,” Enten said.
Since the 1940s, Enten said, no president has successfully increased their approval rating by more than five points between this point in their second term and the midterm elections. Unless Trump can “break history,” he can say, “‘See you later!’ to that Republican majority,” Enten cried.
Per The Hill before the Gallup bomb dripped, an average of recent poll results found he was at a mere negative 13 approval. That suggests the Trump decay is accelerating. And The Hill attributed the sorry results to the economy.
But the Administration, lacking the imagination and will to change course, appears to genuinely believe, as did Team Biden, and as we pointed out early on, Obama, that every problem can be solved with better messaging. From the New York Times:
Just this past weekend, Mr. Trump posted a lengthy social media message boosting his efforts to lower prescription drug costs, which concluded: “If this story is properly told, we should win the Midterm Elections in RECORD NUMBERS. I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT. TALK LOUDLY AND PROUDLY!”
Again, the clip at the top shows Trump has retreated from that claim, apparently as too obviously not credible. Later in the Times account:
Members of the administration have also said that as Mr. Trump prepares to ramp up messaging about his affordability agenda in the coming months, they would be careful to avoid the mistakes of Mr. Biden, whose “Bidenomics” messaging fell flat with voters.
Kevin Hassett, a top White House economic adviser, told reporters last month that “Trumponomics works and Bidenomics doesn’t,” and that income growth was notable under Mr. Trump.
He added: “But we understand that people understand as they look at their pocketbooks that go to the grocery store, that there’s still work to do.”
It’s going to be well-nigh impossible for him to apply porcine maquillage to losing Ukraine. Trump might have had a face-saving play in Venezuela, by doing a repeat Iran of obliterating a few military sites and declaring victory. But he’s gone way too far in noisemaking and troop movements to beat an easy retreat. Xi has bested Trump on rare earths. Even though some experts say it was Trump that called Xi over soyabeans rather than Xi over Japan (and the new PM Takaichi may have gotten out over her skis on her own), it further appears that Trump has had to signal to her to tone down the anti-China rhetoric. Even Thailand’s interim Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul stared Trump down. Thailand resumed action at the Thai-Cambodia border after Cambodia mined area that were being patrolled by Thai soldiers (it was confirmed that these mines were new), resulting in one soldier having his foot blown off. Thailand has since taken the matter to the UN.
Trump halted trade talks with Thailand over Thailand allegedly breaking “his” peace deal. Trump and Malaysian prime minister Ibrahim got on the phone with Anutin, presumably for the purpose of further browbeating. But Anutin got Trump to back off and later say he was decoupling the trade talks from the border dispute settlement.
If you can’t push around a country in Southeast Asia, where you are their biggest export market, what kind of superpower are you? Trump is quickly finding out how far (not very) his favorite tricks get him.
Mind you, we have three more years of this to endure, barring unforeseen events. Trump’s propensity is to become more violent in his rhetoric and actions when he is losing. Lord only knows what is in store.
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Americans care only about the price of gasoline. Everything else can stay unaffordable and will stay unaffordable. As the demagogues say, Prove me wrong!
at the national level, gasoline is at 5 year, nominal lows aka arelative bargain.
even low gas prices won’t save the bottom 80%’s balance sheet.
much like Biden, Trump II is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
If both had done literally nothing in office re. the economy (and just let the Fed pull out the tired liquidity/speed-ball playbook), things would have been better off
Absolutely false. Two Democrats voted into state office in deep red GA over electricity costs.
And both Democrats won 63-37 in a statewide election in which more than 1.5 million went to the polls in a deep off-year election. Georgia Power/Southern Company is perilously close (for them) to losing control of the the Public Service Commission. Given the instinct for self preservation among the three GOPers remaining on the PSC, that might already have happened. And the PSC has little to nothing to do with gasoline prices. This might be a false dawn, but it was heartening nevertheless.
The political impact of utility rate increases should not be underestimated.
In the Pacific Northwest, the steep wholesale rate increases by the Bonneville Power Administration to pay for nuclear project cost overruns completely overturned the complacent pro-development elected public utility boards and replaced them with pro-conservation ratepayer activists. They terminated four of the five plants under construction. This political orientation has continued, with notorious impact when Snohomish PUD withdrew from a power contract with Enron, got sued, and used discovery to expose the fraud and destroy Enron.
The investor-owned utility scandals in California are part of a long struggle over control, with the utilities resorting to white-knuckle control freak levels of corruption to maintain control (yes, the floating ballot box lids again). So far, the fix with the Public Utility Commissioners is holding, but utility politics could end up denying Newsom the Democratic nomination for president.
I’m not following any rate concerns out here; this is nowhere, so there’s little reason for any data centers to pop up.
But just to heat a couple of rooms for the daylight hours, from Duke Energy I’m looking at $200-$300/mo for much of December, Jan, Feb. And that’s if much of the house is unheated and punishingly, wear two sweaters, cold. Probably cost double if I wanted to be less miserable. And this is about 1,000 sq feet.
This has been pretty consistent for a number of recent years, though, but I can certainly see this kind of thing breaking people. When it’s under 60 degrees inside, life isn’t great. Can get it into the high 60s in heated rooms, at least.
I believed that stereotype until I bought my first car. I assume it’s made up by the media.
As a car owner, I care more about the cost of registration, repairs and maintenance, insurance, and the car itself.
Never mind everything not car related.
car pundits lament the death of driving among teens….cuz something-something kids are too lazy to like cars, shake my fist.
look to all the “death by 1000 cuts” costs—insurance, tags, repair costs, traffic, etc. makes Uber looks like the obvious choice
Those car pundits probably think that those kids spend all their money on mashed avocado on toast instead of saving up for a car.
My first new car, purchased as a newly minted grownup, cost $5200, and got paid off with sub <$9 an hour earnings. Today's average new car price is $50,000. Even if 'the kids' go used and way downscale from that average, it looks like quite a mountain to climb off $15 an hour wages.
The powers that be have simply greedflated rent, cars, goods and groceries to the point young people cannot make it work without leaning on parents or others to do the money-lifting.
Totally. I’m carrying my 2 sons cars on my insurance because it was so expensive for them. $200+ per month is what they were facing. That’s like almost 20% of their working income as they can’t work 40 hours a week because of school and/or their age.
My 21 year old nephew managed to total 2 cars in 2 days time last year, and if it wasn’t for mom and dad, he’d be up a river without a paddle or wheels.
What a black mark on your driving record, incidentally.
If your 21 year old nephew totals three more car, would that make him an ace? When the Flying Tigers first went to China, one of them managed to wreck five planes in training which technically made him a Japanese ace.
Shades of John McCain, that!
“insurance, tags, repair costs, traffic, etc. makes Uber looks like the obvious choice”
But could the rubber meet the road with those costs for the Uber drivers?
I guess that would leave the Waymos of the world with big corporations able to bear those costs (with a lot of lobbying, tax breaks, etc).
Yeah, the people I know who fret the most over gas prices (as in like $.50/gal changes in price) are some of the most penny-wise, pound-foolish people I know.
Gas is the only retail item that one sees while driving with a price tag prominently displayed-it looms large in our viewpoint.
Excellent point. I see gas prices from the bus.
And gas is pretty much just the three flavors. I often buy fancy bread at bakeries or the eggs from the farmers market. Or get free eggs from my cousin. I’m not sure what plain white eggs cost. I suppose people can change what they buy with many things.
I was astonished to see that the markup from regular to premium in CA was about $1.20. I had never seen it so high before.
Not for nothing, but when the government opens and yet food banks are still seeing overwhelming demand AND the country is forecast to face the coldest winter in several years, I think you will find that gas barely makes it into the top five concerns regarding affordability. Cheap gas doesn’t solve many of the most pressing problems facing over half the population – a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, and enough heat not to freeze to death or loose an appendage just for starters.
Yes, my own lingering impression is that cheap crude is a flashing yellow light saying the economy is on fumes, pardon the pun…Darth Cheney used to be able to say “nigerian rebels” and crude would go to the moon. Now? Nothing moves it anywhere but down.
Trump might have to do a bit of a rethink here. If prices, costs and inflation are already bad now, how much worse will be by November in the upcoming Midterms. You can’t wave them away, you can’t ignore them and you can’t just insult people that bring the subject up and think that you can get away with it. He is certainly running out of runway space to do something about it and I suspect that his constant denials that anything is wrong is wearing thin fast. It didn’t work for Biden and it won’t work for him. Then again, Biden thought that the economy was going well because wealthy people were doing well and Trump is probably thinking this too. All his buddies are making out like bandits.
All his buddies are making out like bandits.
Government by the business class is good for the business class.
“These people are too lazy to work, blah blah blah…blah blah blah.”
Reminds me of the old racialist joke about why Group X parents won’t allow their children to marry members of Group Y; “Their children will be too lazy to go out and steal.”
We can’t say that about the offspring of our financial elites, can we.
I remember reading somewhere the remark that Neoliberalism was a “leaner and meaner” version of Classic Capitalism. Since “olde fashioned” Capitalism required the working classes to sell their labour to survive, Neoliberal Capitalism added the “refinement” that the Elites now essentially stole a higher percentage of the goods and services thus produced. I like to think of it as “Sophisticated Accumulation.”
Stay safe.
It seems there is considerable discussion of what is happening in America. This article has caused some reaction.
https://www.yesigiveafig.com/p/part-1-my-life-is-a-lie?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
We had that two days running in Links last week.
I had missed it, so thanks for the link. Pretty dire. One wonders why there are not protests in the streets. But we know the answer to that. There will be a new economic model someday, but lots of suffering until then.
What do you think the No King’s thing was? A picnic?
Effectively, that’s all it was. What demands were there? What follow up action? Absoutely squat came from them.
Benedict Donald needs to promote WIN* buttons ala Gerry Ford
*Without Inflation Now
Trump, having no true principles of his own, is capable of completely reversing himself after throwing some crackpot ideas against the wall to see what will stick. But the army of sycophants surrounding him will resist and are likely the real reason that his decline will continue. Isn’t his specialty supposed to be firing people? Rubio first, then Noem, Hegseth, Bessent……etc. And even then there’s still Jared and the rest of his grifting family.
Via ovicipitum dura est.
Actually it’s clear that Trump does have unbending principles: whatever happens, treat people like garbage—unless they have lots of money. That’s been the clear message through the first year of this bizarre political performance. Why take away SNAP, Medicaid, etc from people who really need it—many of them your strong supporters—particular after you’ve openly showered endless gifts on the billionaire class? Trump clearly doesn’t care if he ran an even bigger deficit, so why do it? Looking from the outside it feels like a strange perversity, but not if you accept that what truly animates him, what gives him deep pleasure, is making people miserable, even those desperate enough to love him.
If Thiel is looking for the anti-Christ, look no further than the guy who turned loaves of bread into vicious, for 42 million.
These people are seriously smoking crack
November private payrolls unexpectedly fell by 32,000, led by steep small business job cuts, ADP reports (CNBC)
Cuts incoming?
Oops, MAGA on the March!
Been watching this young American traveler’s sojourns in China and everything seems so reasonable there, compared to here.
No such thing as a $25 motel room exists in the USA for all intents and purposes, look at what $25 gets you in China…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EJHLC9BDGQo
Isn’t that around 175 yuan? Doesn’t sound like an all that amazing price for normal Chinese, though the kitchen is a nice perk at that amount.
Price of beef going up?
Tyson WIPES OUT Entire Nebraska Town To ‘MANIPULATE’ Beef Market
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcrOXDPijes
Re: Trump video on affordability
I watched it and all he talked about was the price of eggs.
The whole one minute of the video was about deflection from the painful rise in the prices of so many other things. He gave no mention of the essentials whose prices have risen so dramatically in the past decade. Like houses, apartment rentals, medical insurance, home insurance and repairs, transportation expenses, etc. The list goes on and on and eggs ain’t on it.
I think I can safely predict that the next revolution will not be triggered by the cost of eggs.* The restless populace will simply stop making omelettes if they get too pricey. No need to man the barricades. The necessities of life, however, are another matter and more difficult to do without, if not impossible. Therein lie the seeds of revolt.
Yet Trump bloviates about the price of eggs to the exclusion of that of all the more important material needs. Does not NC call this “straw-manning”?
*I currently spend $4 a month on eggs.
I suspect eggs were chosen as the topic of discourse because only a few months ago there was a spike in egg prices due to bird flu. The spike was fully reversed by around July (using the BLS average, see https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/APU0000708111), but for a while it dominated news headlines. Which is probably how it got into Trump’s head – it was on television.
By the by, over in the outer boroughs of NYC, a dozen eggs is still $5-$6 on average, $8 or so for some brands. Manhattan is more expensive, but not by its usual margin of 2x-3x. I laugh in the general direction of your $4 a month, especially as eggs are also necessary for any sort of baking. Which is a thing in many an immigrant community.
But forget eggs. Again, over in NYC’s outer boroughs, I have seen my grocery bill – staples, tomatoes, sugar, cheese, milk, that sort of thing – increase by ~33% on average between the summer of 2024 and the summer of 2025. It is rising again, as the prices of imported fruits and vegetables are finally starting to go up (some of the local cashiers had been warning about this since Trump’s “Liberation Day”, and now, it’s here), again by around 30%-40% on average. Which means that my next summer my weekly grocery bill will have doubled versus 2024, and I am not the only one in this boat.
Rents, healthcare et al are a big component of inflation, but in my experience, the very first thing people notice are staples they buy every week. Groceries. Gasoline, which per BLS was up 4.1% in September vs. August nationally. And so on. Trump may not know anything about anything, but he “reads the room” and senses the mood is getting uglier by the minute. So he comes back to eggs today, some other thing he saw on television tomorrow, and hoping all the meanwhile he can buy himself enough time to find someone else to blame for it all.