Heading into the midterms, the economy should have been President Trumpâs and the GOPâs strong point, but itâs not thanks to the self-inflected injury of tariffs and the inflation it continues to stoke.
Yes, the president was dealt a bad hand that in many ways he made better.
Inflation is down from the insanity of the Biden years, thanks to the White Houseâs deregulation and tax cuts increasing the supply side of the economy.
That looks really good on paper, with strong growth and low unemployment.
But prices have never gone down, and inflation â a pernicious tax on the working class â remains well above the target rate of 2%.
So what gives?
The Iran conflictâs impact on fuel prices doesnât help but the last time I checked, gas prices on average are not that different than when Biden was throttling drilling; the weakened mullahs will ultimately provide a peace dividend that many Americans favor.
The bigger, more obvious culprit, at least according to my GOP sources who work in businesses both small and large: the presidentâs obsession with those trade levies, a.k.a. tariffs.
I know what youâre thinking: Trump imposed all these tariffs, Wall Street freaked, and the stock market rebounded and the economy boomed.
The AI build-out has enhanced productivity, while business investment has been jacked by Trumpâs tax and regulation policies.
Kitchen-table issue
Top line numbers of the economy show amazing resilience.
Just last week, we got an awesome GDP reading growth of 3.4% in the last quarter.
Consumer spending isnât dropping off the cliff. In many sectors, itâs getting stronger.
But that hides the damage tariffs are doing to the average working-class voter who canât speculate in the stock market to pay for stuff like putting food on the table.
I hasten to make election predictions for the simple reason that voting trends tend to be among the most unpredictable of events these days.
(Otherwise, Bibi Netanyahu would be looking for a job instead of holding on to power after his surprisingly strong showing in the Israeli Ârunoff.)
The prescriptions the Dems are offering are some of the same stuff that doomed the Biden-Harris presidency: Far-leftism in both cultural and economic matters, now with a nasty dose of antiÂsemitism that may yet tilt the various races including those senate contests in Texas and Michigan to the GOP.
That said, there are some generalizations you can draw from polls and public sentiment about the MAGA economic agenda â and they ainât good for the president and the GOP.
People have to eat, travel and drive cars even when their paycheck doesnât stretch as far, so be careful about celebrating the resilient American consumer.
We still have inflation at 3.7%, well above the target rate. And wages arenât keeping up â theyâre growing at just 3.6% year-over-year.
We havenât had the manufacturing tariff boom that the president and his team promised when they began imposing levies on friend and foe alike.
Almost the opposite.
Itâs one thing to tariff goods from China, but why target Canada and Mexico, two longtime trade partners that have helped grow the US economy through trade?
A regressive tax
It made no sense, and still doesnât, for the simple reason that tariffs are a regressive tax on working-class American consumers â the same people who put Trump in office in 2024 and appear to be boycotting the GOP now.
I know the president backed off his most draconian levies when the markets imploded in the spring of 2025.
But others remain.
Letâs face it: If we tariff Canada, they will tariff us, and our exports will be less attractive, adding downward pressure on paychecks.
Itâs no coincidence that two Senate races the GOP should Âreally clean up on, in Michigan and Texas, are nail-biters that favor Democrats.
The Dems in these races, Abdul El-Sayed and James Talarico, embody everything that repulsed voters about Biden and Harris.
Yet both are said to be winning their states, which went to Trump in 2024.
Maybe the polls are wrong, but this is too close for comfort and the reason is obvious.
These are border states where the tariffs squeezed the local economies.
Nothing is binary, of course.
El-Sayed is no dummy and is a gifted campaigner.
The GOP Senate candidate in Texas, Ken Paxton, has so many blind spots, we donât have room to print them all, and Talarico has pivoted away from leftism in the race.
To be sure, El-Sayed and Talarico are fringe leftists, and that should hurt them more than the polls suggest.
But give them credit: Both have pivoted to the affordability crisis, made worse by those damn tariffs.
Such a shame.
The economy should have been Trumpâs and the GOPâs strong point.
It didnât have to happen, were it not for unforced errors that the entire party will likely pay for.
