WASHINGTON – President Trump made dozens of promises when he campaigned to retake the White House last year, from boosting economic growth to banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports.
But one pledge stood out as the most vital in many voters’ eyes: Trump said he would not only bring inflation under control,but push grocery and energy prices back down.”Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make america affordable again,” he said in 2024. “Your prices are going to come tumbling down, your gasoline is going to come tumbling down, and your heating bills and cooling bills are going to be coming down.”
He hasn’t delivered. Gasoline and eggs are cheaper than they were a year ago, but most other prices are still rising, including groceries and electricity. The Labor Department estimated Thursday that inflation is running at 2.7% only a little better than the 3% Trump inherited from Joe Biden; electricity was up 6.9%.
And that has given the president a major political problem: Many of the voters who backed him last year are losing faith.”I voted for Trump in 2024 as he was promising America first … and he was promising a better economy,” Ebyad, a nurse in Texas, said on a Focus Group podcast hosted by Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell. “It feels like all those promises have been broken.”
Since Inauguration Day, the president’s job approval has declined from 52% to 43% in the polling average calculated by statistician Nate Silver. Approval for Trump’s performance on the economy,once one of his strongest points,has sunk even lower to 39%.
That’s perilous territory for a president who hopes to help his party keep its narrow majority in elections for the House of Representatives next year.
To republican pollsters and strategists, the reasons for Trump’s slump are clear: He overpromised last year and he’s under-performing now.
“The most important reasons he won in 2024 were his promises to bring inflation down and juice the economy,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. “That’s the reason he won so many voters who traditionally had supported Democrats, including Hispanics. … But he hasn’t been able to deliver. Inflation has moderated, but it hasn’t gone backward.”
Last week, after deriding complaints about affordability as “a Democrat hoax,” Trump belatedly launched a campaign to convince voters that he’s at work fixing the problem.
But at his first stop, a rally in Pennsylvania, he continued arguing that the economy is already in great shape.
“Our prices are coming down tremendously,” he insisted.
“You’re doing better than you’ve ever done,” he said, implicitly dismissing voters’ concerns.He urged families to cope with high tariffs by cutting back: “You know, you can give up certain products,” he said. “You