Was Affordability A Hoax When It Helped Get You Elected, Trump?

Like Barbie, Trump has a great day every day. And who wouldn’t?! Waking up in his golden Dreamhouse (ballrooms sold separately), Trump gets to decide his truth, the truth, on any given matter at any given time! In Trump Land anything can happen! 

The latest from Trump Land is that the American economy has never ever been better! Kicking off the battle for the 2026 midterm elections at a rally in north-east Pennsylvania – his first in five months – Trump united the crowd behind his truth about the economy, telling Pennsylvanians “you’re doing better than you’ve ever done!”. A week earlier, at the Thanksgiving turkey pardoning at the White House, he echoed a similar line: “Our country is doing really well economically, like we’ve never done before.” And if the economy were to be graded, it would get an “A+++++” courtesy of the president himself. Naturally. 

So, it is such a shame that the Big Bad Democrats are refusing to play make-believe. There’s only one thing it can be in Trump Land. “You know they always have a hoax,” Trump told the raucous crowd in Pennsylvania. “The new word is affordability”. A devious plan to discredit Trump and his economy, Democrats are spoiling all the fun by suggesting that Americans are struggling with the cost of living. They’re even daring to call it a crisis. What a con! 

After all, where the economy might not be…perfect…where you might say that…prices are too high…well that’s all the Democrat’s fault! “They gave you high prices. They gave you the highest inflation in history and we’re…bringing those prices down rapidly, lower prices, bigger pay checks. We’re getting inflation, we’re crushing it, and you’re getting much higher wages,” he told the Pennsylvania crowd, displaying his deftness for blame-shifting before boasting to the blue-collar crowd about the stock market.  

It's true, under Biden inflation spiked. Prices jumped about 18% over the course of his term, with the Consumer Price Index, the US government’s primary inflation measure, spiking to 9.1% year-over-year in June 2022. Whilst this was a global phenomenon, spurred by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, consumers are often immune to wider geopolitical abstractions; when the price of petrol hits a record $5.02 a gallon, as it did in June 2022, you care little about the causes. You just want petrol to be affordable again. 

All of which meant that Biden’s – and subsequently Harris’ – campaign trail left a sour taste in the mouths of voters. By extolling the virtues of ‘Bidenomics’, pointing to plummeting inflation statistics (inflation fell to 2.4% in September 2024, and was 3.0% in Biden’s last month in office), the Democrats adopted a rose-tinted view of the economy that voters did not share. The result? Trump rode the wave of voter dissatisfaction on the cost of living straight back to the White House. It seems that affordability isn’t so much of a new word, nor a hoax after all – Trump told the same region of north-east Pennsylvania on the campaign trail that “starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down and we will make America affordable again” – and Trump’s refusal to acknowledge it is threatening to drag the Republicans down. 

Currently, Trump’s approval rating is just 41%. Polling for Politico suggests that 37% of Trump’s Republican voters agreed that they could not remember a time when things ever felt worse economically. Whilst Trump touts the falling costs of certain symbolic goods, like eggs and petrol, as evidence that he is the ‘Affordability President’, inflation remains at 3.0%, the same as when he took office. Coffee, beef, and tropical fruit are household items whose prices have soared, having been particularly affected by Trump’s Oprah-style tariff frenzy in April – so much so that Trump has had to reduce tariffs on these items, alongside issuing a $12bn bailout for farmers. For the median household, this, combined with the administration’s crackdown on undocumented workers, rising energy costs, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which could see many lower-income Americans lose food benefits and health insurance subsidies, amounts to an estimated net loss of $2,250 in 2025 spending power. 

It is little wonder, then, that the tide is turning against President Trump; in a repeat of recent history, American consumers, feeling shafted, are looking for their financial concerns to be heard. Affordability certainly doesn’t feel like a hoax to them. Nor does it to the Democrats, who, having learnt this lesson the hard way, are seeing it as a fantastic opportunity to recalibrate. Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s mayoral election, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in Virginia and New Jersey’s respective gubernatorial elections, and Eileen Higgins in Trump’s own backyard, Miami, where she ended a three-decade-long losing streak for the Democrats, all have stormed to victory with campaigns laser-focused on the cost-of-living. 

Trump may have succeeded in a fantasy bubble thus far, dragging his supporters with him, but unfortunately, reality has a habit of puncturing make-believe. The recent roll of Democrat victories suggests as much. More fool him then for suggesting affordability is a hoax. 

Illustration: Will Alle/Europinion