Trump’s Inflation Record Could Cost Republicans in the Midterm Elections

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump would rather voters look past inflation. For many Americans, however, rising costs are impossible to overlook.

Filling a standard Ford F-150 now costs roughly $100, about $30 more than a year ago. Mortgage rates have climbed to levels that have weakened home sales, while consumer prices over the past 12 months have increased faster than wages. For the average family, that amounts to a decline in purchasing power.

With midterm elections just one week away, the vote is shaping up as a referendum on Trump’s second term. The president is struggling to fulfill his campaign pledge to lower costs, even as he declares that the nation has entered an economic “golden age.” The frustration that helped fuel his political comeback two years ago could now threaten Republican control of Congress.

On the campaign trail, Trump maintains that “our nation is doing better now than ever before.” He has also promised that interest rates and oil prices will fall sharply once the war with Iran — which he started — ends.

Trump dismisses the term “affordability” as “a con job by the Democrats,” saying it “doesn’t mean anything to anybody.”

Voters see a different economy than Trump describes

The president’s upbeat message comes as voters report difficulty paying for necessities, including fuel and groceries. Many blame Trump for the higher prices, citing his aggressive tariff policies and the continuing, unpopular war with Iran.

Record diesel prices have been especially damaging, driving up transportation and farming expenses. That pressure is creating problems for Republicans in traditionally conservative states such as Iowa, Kansas, Ohio and Texas, where Democrats appear unusually competitive in contests that will help determine Trump’s final two years in office.

“The costs of things are absolutely the first thing people talk about, but also it’s their pay not keeping up with the cost,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “It’s a double whammy.”

Gas prices have emerged as one of the most important concerns for voters.

“People hate paying more money for gas, and the prices have gone up a lot,” said Stephen Moore, who previously advised Trump on the economy. “It’s frustrating because Trump’s done so many good things for the economy. But with the Iran situation, that’s really had a big effect on the economy, and Republicans may pay a high price for that.”

Misty Reeder, 48, describes herself as politically “in the middle,” but she voted for Democrats across the ballot in Easley, South Carolina.

“I’ve noticed that things have been getting a lot harder,” said Reeder, who receives disability payments. “You hear about it everywhere you go.”

Reeder said the rent on the home she and her husband have rented for six years has risen by hundreds of dollars.

“Something’s gotta give,” she said. “It’s like a dam — the pressure’s too much, and it’s going to break.”

Sandra Capell, 69, said she wants “to see some change” in the economy, despite voting Republican in Easley, part of South Carolina’s conservative Upstate region.

“I think everybody is kind of suffering when it comes to groceries, gas, everything really,” she said. “I’m looking at the Republican Party to jump on the wagon, get in the saddle and let’s bring it back.”

Beti Rosales, 47, said rising prices have hurt her family’s Mexican restaurant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley, a region that has shifted between the parties in recent years. Limes and avocados are more expensive, and so is the plumber the restaurant occasionally needs.

Rosales gave Trump and the Republicans a chance two years ago, hoping they would ease inflation.

“The reality now is that it actually didn’t get better,” she said. “It actually got worse. The prices of everything have increased.”

Rosales is now considering voting Democratic in the midterms.

“Maybe fresh new faces might make a difference?” she said.

Trump promised he’d bring prices down

While running in 2024, Trump hammered President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the election, for high inflation, which climbed as high as 9.1% in June 2022. He promised voters he would lower gasoline prices and unlock roaring growth.

“With your vote in this election, I will end inflation,” he vowed.

In less than two years, Trump has aggressively remodeled the U.S. economy. He’s slapped double-digit tariffs on many trading partners — including the European Union, India, Japan, Canada and Mexico — and sparked trade wars with allies. The U.S. government now holds stakes in several dozen private companies. He’s signed broad income tax cuts into law.

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But the persistent challenge of inflation has continued, overshadowing the positives of continued economic growth and a low unemployment rate. Inflation was 3% when Trump took office and reached 3.7% last month.

The president has played down the intensity of inflation, claiming that it is under 2% and “under control.”

Democrats have seized on the discontent, using the same high cost of living that sank them before to pressure vulnerable Republicans and put congressional districts Trump won by even double digits in play.

“Now remember, they promised to lower prices on Day One. Instead, under the failed President Donald J. Trump, it costs more than ever in American history to fill up your truck, stock your fridge, visit the doctor or power your home,” said Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running for reelection, at a recent rally in Atlanta.

“You work harder and harder, but the treadmill gets faster and steeper and the bills get higher and higher,” he told the crowd.

Cait Conley, a Democrat running in New York against Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, one of his party’s most vulnerable incumbents, harkened back to his tweet from the last midterm elections, when Biden was president. Lawler had advised voters to “fill up your tank and go grocery shopping — it will inform your decision.”

In a new ad, Conley said voters should follow that advice this year “and then tell me if the system’s working for you.”

“You deserve better. It shouldn’t be this hard,” she says.

Democrats turn Trump’s attacks back on him

Conley and other candidates have pounded on a theme that Democrats believe will be especially effective this cycle: accusing Trump and other Republicans of compounding voters’ economic pain by corruptly pursuing policies that help their billionaire donors at the expense of everyday Americans.

“I know you’re frustrated. Washington politicians get rich while you get hurt. Corporations make huge profits while your costs go up,” North Carolina Senate candidate Roy Cooper says in an ad airing in the competitive state.

That has included a particular focus on the war with Iran.

“Trump’s war abroad costs taxpayers a billion dollars a day on a war we have no business fighting. Our schools crumble, our factories shutter, our gas prices skyrocket. But when they want war, billion-dollar blank checks,” says Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in another spot.

The president “thinks that the economy is doing well because he and his family have enriched themselves to the tune of several billion dollars,” said Amy Richards, 56, a onetime Republican who has voted Democratic since Trump became his party’s 2016 nominee.

“He has zero idea what it is like to receive a paycheck and have to feed yourself and your family,” said Richards, standing outside a polling place in her town of Round Rock, Texas, on Friday, “and he doesn’t care.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have tried to cast Democrats as extreme, pointing to an ascendant populist wing that includes a number of Democratic socialists.

Moore, who advised Trump’s campaigns, said he wished Republicans would spend more time talking about the economy’s strengths, including rising median incomes and a record-setting stock market, even as he acknowledged those numbers might not resonate with voters.

“What matters is how people feel, and clearly people are feeling stressed out financially,” he said.

Some Trump supporters remain satisfied. Renee Blood, 57, an executive assistant in Round Rock, feels the economy has “improved quite well.”

“Of course we see gas prices up and down, but things are much more affordable,” she said.

She plans to vote Republican because she worries things will get worse if Democrats return to power.

Trump’s golden age might not have arrived, she said, but “we are still working on it.”

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Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Meg Kinnard in Easley, S.C.; Mike Catalini in Allentown, Pa.; and Jesse Bedayn in Round Rock, Texas, contributed to this report.