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 successfully beat up on 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.
Americans care only about the price of gasoline. Everything else can stay unaffordable and will stay unaffordable. As the demagogues say, Prove me wrong!