WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is adjusting his communications strategy to appeal to voters worried about the cost of living by highlighting new tax breaks and showing progress in fighting inflation.
Affordability is at the heart of the message, and the push comes after inflation emerged as the biggest vulnerability for Trump and Republicans in Tuesday’s election, where voters overwhelmingly said the economy was their biggest concern.
Democrats used affordability concerns to build huge leads in gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, turning Trump’s strength in the 2024 presidential election into a weakness in next year’s midterm elections.
White House officials and others familiar with their thinking requested anonymity to speak for this article so as not to preempt the president’s actions. They stressed that affordability has always been a priority for Trump, but that the president plans to talk more about it, as he did on Thursday when he announced that Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk would lower the price of their obesity drugs.
“We are the ones who have done a great job on affordability, not the Democrats,” Trump said at an Oval Office event to announce the deal. “We just lost an election on affordability, they said. This is a Democrat hoax.”
The inflation outlook is unclear
Currently, the inflation outlook has worsened under Trump. Consumer prices rose 3% annually in September, compared with 2.3% in April, when the president first began imposing significant tariff increases that suddenly weighed uncertainty on the economy. The AP voter poll showed the economy was the top issue in Tuesday’s elections in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City and California.
Food prices continue to rise and recently electricity bills have become a new problem. At the same time, the pace of employment growth has slowed, falling by 23% compared to the previous year.
The White House is keeping a list of talking points about the economy, noting that the stock market has hit record highs on multiple occasions and that the president is attracting foreign investment. Trump has emphasized that gasoline prices are falling, claiming that gas costs an average of $2 a gallon, but AAA reported Thursday that the national average was $3.08, about two cents lower than a year ago.
“Americans are paying less for essentials like gas and eggs, and today the administration signed another drug pricing agreement to deliver unprecedented health care savings to everyday Americans,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai.
Trump is briefed on the economy by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials at least once a week and there are often daily discussions about tariffs, a senior White House official said, noting that Trump is expected to take more domestic travel next year to make clear he is improving affordability.
The White House constantly posts on social media about prices and deals on Thanksgiving staples at retailers like Walmart, Lidl, Aldi and Target.
“The affordability is much better with the Republicans,” Trump said Thursday evening. “The only problem is that Republicans aren’t talking about it.
But critics say it will be hard for Trump to reverse public perceptions on affordability.
“He’s in real trouble, and I think it’s about more than just the cost of living,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal business advocacy group.
Owens noted that Trump has “lost his strength” as voters increasingly doubt Trump’s economic leadership compared to Democrats, adding that the president doesn’t have time to change public perceptions of him as he continues to pursue sweeping tariffs.
New hype about income tax cuts before April
There will be new policies on affordability, a person familiar with the White House’s thinking said, failing to comment. Trump indicated on Thursday that there would be further agreements on drug prices. Two other White House officials said messaging would change — but not policy.
A gigantic part of the administration’s response to affordability will be educating people ahead of tax season about the role of Trump’s income tax cuts in any refunds they receive in April, the person familiar with the planning said. These cuts were part of the massive bill that Republicans pushed through Congress in July.
This person emphasized that the biggest challenge is to reduce prices while increasing wages so that people can feel and see every progress.
There’s also a bet that the economy will be in healthier shape in six months. As Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s term ends in May, the White House expects the Fed to begin making consistent cuts to its key interest rate. They assume that inflation rates will frigid and that a decline in the federal budget deficit will improve sentiment in financial markets.
But the U.S. economy rarely cooperates with a president’s intentions, a lesson most recently learned by Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, whose popularity plummeted after inflation rose to a four-decade high in June 2022.
The Trump administration claims it is simply working on an inflation challenge inherited from Biden, but new economic research suggests Trump has created his own inflation challenge through tariffs.
Since April, economist Alberto Cavallo of Harvard University and his colleagues Paola Llama of Northwestern University and Franco Vazquez of the Universidad de San Andrés have been tracking the impact of import tariffs on consumer prices.
In an October paper, economists found that without Trump’s tariffs, the inflation rate would have been significantly lower at 2.2%.
The government maintains that the tariffs have not contributed to inflation. They want to argue that import tariffs support the economy and dismiss criticism of import tariffs contributing to inflation as a Democratic talking point.
The fate of Trump’s country-specific tariffs is currently being decided by the Supreme Court, where the justices at a hearing Wednesday cast doubt on the administration’s claims that tariffs are essentially regulations and can be imposed by a president without congressional approval. Trump has at times claimed that foreign countries are paying the tariffs rather than U.S. citizens, a claim he backed away from slightly on Thursday.
“Maybe they’ll pay something,” he said. “But when you look at the overall impact, the Americans win enormously.”
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Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
