Prices have continued to rise starkly throughout Q4 of 2025, representing an uncertain turn for the economy and the political future of the President, elected largely on a platform of lower prices, particularly for groceries. Costs have remained the single most important issue for voters, leading Democratic candidates to victories last November, including hard-left populist Zohran Kwame Mamdani, now mayor-elect of New York City, who ran on a campaign based almost solely on relieving voter’s strains on their wallets, promising free public transport, free childcare, frozen rents, and government-run grocery stores forcing big grocery stores like Kroger to compete with affordable prices.
Trump, whose own policies include tariffs which directly increase costs for consumers, has been anxious to transfer some of this success. When he met with Mr. Mamdani, he seemed enamored with him, putting long standing policies regarding immigration and Israel to the side in order to cooperate on pricing. It appeared as though Mr. Trump was potentially vying to gain some credit off of any successful price drops these policies may cause, regardless of their incongruence with his wider political ideology.
The rising prices have affected the President’s approval ratings, too. On the economy, once handedly his best issue, only 40.8% of voters trust him, while 55.7 percent distrust him, a 15 point gap, where just months ago he had merely a five point gap. On inflation, the situation is even more dire– only 34.8% of Americans approve of his handling of it, while 62% disapprove.
Trump has publicly scoffed at claims his administration is failing to address rising costs, claiming that affordability is a “hoax” and a “con job perpetrated by the Democrats”. In a long address in rural Pennsylvania this month, purportedly given to address voter concerns around costs, he digressed repeatedly, decrying that the U.S. accepts immigrants from “—-hole countries”, like Kenya and Haiti, and not “nice places”, like Denmark and Switzerland*. He also appeared irritated that he was being asked to address affordability at all, claiming that the “economy was roaring”, and that “prices are way way way way down” (they aren’t– gas is up 2.7% and electricity is up 4%.) He also graded himself an “A+++++” on the economy.
Beneath the bravado, however, the administration is working to try and find a way to tame inflation, including largely abandoning tariffs with Europe and Latin America, pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates in spite of an uncertain job market, and musing on potentially granting all Americans a 2’000 dollar stipend to balance out expiring healthcare subsidies and increasing inflation– an economically redistributive policy intensely atypical of the conservative and anti-socialist Republicans.
Although Republicans in congress are anxious about the 2026 primaries, and concerned that their party isn’t putting forward a strong policy on this issue, Democrats may still have a hard time convincing voters that they can be trusted to ease affordability. As stark as the recent rises in costs have been, the significantly larger inflation wave of 2021-2023 under the reign of Joe Biden still looms large in the public memory. Gavin Christopher Newsom, governor of California and current early frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic nomination, faces similar challenges. California is the most expensive state in the country by a considerable margin, and for Newsom, affordability has become both a white whale and a cudgel with which his opponents beat him over the head.
Increasingly, the future of American politics seems determined by who will be able to get costs under control for the American people the fastest and the most permanently.
