Donald Trump’s Inflationary Agenda

Donald Trump, probably by mistake, said something honest the other day.Appearing on the White House lawn Tuesday afternoon, Trump was asked by a reporter to what extent Americans’ financial situation was motivating him to make a deal with Iran. “Not even a little bit,” Trump replied, before elaborating: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”Trump was probably trying to lie here—he likely wanted to reject the premise that the economic pain caused by his war of choice is putting pressure on him to end it. The premise is obvious, but he has fervently denied it, in part to retain some leverage over Iran.But his denial revealed a deeper truth: Trump has treated the public’s economic well-being as an afterthought. The thing he admitted so casually is the primary reason his popularity has cratered. Trump was elected to tackle inflation, and instead has made it worse.[Rogé Karma: The one tiny problem with Trump’s affordability agenda]Trump won the 2024 election in large part because the post-pandemic inflation shock doomed both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Trump promised, “We’re going to bring those costs way down.” This goal was never realistic—reducing the nominal price level would have been virtually impossible without a recession. What many Democrats glumly assumed would happen, rather, was that Trump would change the definition of success from lower prices to a lower inflation level. And because the inflation rate had been slowly returning to normal since 2023, Trump didn’t need to do much to achieve this goal.The factors that determine inflation often lie outside elected officials’ control. The Biden-era inflation surge occurred mostly due to the disruptive effects of reopening the global economy after the coronavirus pandemic, though the large fiscal stimulus he signed also contributed.The rise in inflation under Trump, by contrast, is almost entirely a result of his administration’s policy choices. Every time he has fa