Frozen dinners were useful when no one was home to cook. A fancy cheese or apple roll felt like a family treat. But not any more. \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to do those little luxuries any more because they\u2019re just too expensive to feed five with,\u201d says Cat Hill. \u201cThere\u2019s not any wiggle room.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 43-year-old from Hornby, New York, has been hit by both higher grocery prices and rising costs for her small business running a horse stable. Under Donald Trump<\/a>, she worries it may get even harder. \u201cWith this administration, it doesn\u2019t appear to be stabilising,\u201d she adds. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to think about how exactly we are going to ride this out.\u201d<\/p>\n Hill is among millions of people feeling the pain of the US\u2019s affordability crisis. The costs of groceries, housing, childcare, education and healthcare have become intolerable to many, who in turn put the blame on politicians. As Thanksgiving approaches, it appears that the US president is belatedly waking up to the problem and scrambling for answers<\/a>.<\/p>\n During last year\u2019s election campaign, Trump was all too conscious of the political utility of the high cost of living. He promised voters that he would bring down prices \u201cstarting on day one<\/a>\u201d. But two days after winning, he changed course by remarking: \u201cOur groceries are way down.<\/a> Everything is way down \u2026 So I don\u2019t want to hear about the affordability.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of the first year of Trump\u2019s second term was then dominated by his trade wars, his draconian crackdown on illegal immigration, his decision to send national guard troops into American cities and the longest government shutdown in history.<\/p>\n But voters had other concerns. Prices rose in five of the six main grocery groups tracked in the consumer price index from January to September. These include meats, poultry and fish<\/a> (up 4.5%), non-alcoholic beverages<\/a> (up 2.8%) and fruits and vegetables<\/a> (up 1.3%).<\/p>\n Officials at the Federal Reserve have long been clear that Trump\u2019s tariffs caused inflation, though it is uncertain how long the effects will last. Consumer prices had been increasing at an annual rate of 2.3% in April when Trump launched the import taxes and that rate accelerated to 3% in September.<\/p>\n Adding insult to injury, even as the shutdown deepened the financial woes of many, Trump launched remodeling projects<\/a> including a gilded ballroom attached to the White House and threw a Great Gatsby-themed party at his luxurious Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.<\/p>\n Tara Setmayer<\/a>, co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, a women-led Super Pac, said: \u201cThe ads write themselves [for the midterm elections] in 2026 when you have a president who promised to make the American people\u2019s lives better \u2013 and who was supposed to be a champion of the working class and not of the elite \u2013 bragging repeatedly from his gilded Oval Office while military families are on food bank lines.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so tone-deaf and so \u2018let them eat cake\u2019 it\u2019s hard to believe that he\u2019s serious about this but he is and keeps constantly doing this. It screams: \u2018I don\u2019t give a damn about everyday people,\u2019 and his base is beginning to wake up to the fact that perhaps he doesn\u2019t care about us.\u201d<\/p>\n The shutdown froze the collection of the most recent data but it is clear that people feel like prices are too high. Consumer sentiment dropped to a near record low in November, going from 71.8 out of 100 in November 2024 to 51, according to the University of Michigan\u2019s Surveys of Consumers<\/a>.<\/p>\n A grocery store in Los Angeles, California, on 12 August 2025. Photograph: Allison Dinner\/EPA<\/p>\n Joanne Hsu<\/a>, the director of the survey and an economist at the University of Michigan, said that even while concerns over tariffs have started to level off, consumers are still experiencing higher prices.<\/p>\n Consumers \u201care continuing to be very frustrated by these high prices\u201d, Hsu said. \u201cThey feel like those high prices are eroding their living standard, and they just don\u2019t feel like they\u2019re thriving at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n It was against this backdrop that Republicans were blindsided by this month\u2019s elections when Democrats swept the board<\/a> from New York to Virginia with a message laser-focused on affordability. Economic worries were the dominant concern for voters, according to the AP Voter Poll.<\/p>\n Trump entered a period of denial. He posted on social media: \u201cAffordability is a lie when used by the Dems. It is a complete CON JOB. Thanksgiving costs are 25% lower this year than last, under Crooked Joe! We are the Party of Affordability!\u201d<\/p>\n But he was also stung into action. He conceded that some consumer costs are \u201ca little bit higher\u201d and floated some half-formed ideas to ease financial pressures. He said he may stretch the 30-year mortgage to 50 years to reduce the size of monthly payments.<\/p>\n He partially backtracked on tariffs, a core part of his economic agenda, reducing levies on imports of products such as coffee, beef and tropical fruit, admitting they \u201cmay, in some cases\u201d have contributed to higher prices.<\/p>\n Adam Green<\/a>, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee<\/a>, said: \u201cThe fact that Trump decided to lower tariffs on coffee and bananas is a complete admission that across the economy he is jacking up prices on millions of families. That was a big tell and Democrats should be exploiting that.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery Democrat should be going to a supermarket pointing to bananas and coffee on social media and saying, if you see prices come down, that is Trump admitting that he\u2019s jacking up prices everywhere: your car, your baby diapers, your other foods.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump also proposed a $2,000 dividend, funded by tariff revenue, for all Americans except the rich. This could take the form of a cheque bearing his signature, reminiscent of stimulus cheques he sent to millions of Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n But Republicans on Capitol Hill were distinctly sceptical<\/a> about the idea at a time when the federal government is burdened by debt, warning that the Trump cheques could fuel even further inflation.<\/p>\n It might be too little too late. In a recent Fox News poll, 76% of respondents had a negative view of the state of the economy \u2013 down 9% since July. In a Marquette University survey, 72% disapproved of Trump\u2019s handling of inflation and the cost of living. And in a Reuters\/Ipsos poll, 65% of respondents, including a third of Republicans, disapproved of Trump\u2019s handling of the cost of living.<\/p>\n On Monday, Trump used a summit sponsored by McDonald\u2019s to insist the economy was moving in the right direction and cast blame on his predecessor, Joe Biden. \u201cWe had the highest, think of it, the highest inflation in the history of our country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cNow we have normal inflation. We\u2019re going to get it a little bit lower, frankly, but we have normal, we\u2019ve normalized it, we have it down to a low level, but we\u2019re going to get it a little bit lower. We want perfection.\u201d<\/p>\n But Trump\u2019s troubles might be giving voters a feeling of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. Biden tried to convince Americans that the economy was strong. \u201cBidenomics is working,\u201d he said in a 2023 speech. \u201cToday, the US has had the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economies since the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n His arguments did little to sway voters as only 36% of adults in August 2023 approved of his handling of the economy, according to a poll at the time by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research.<\/p>\n Now Trump is leaning on a message that echoes Biden\u2019s claims in 2021 that elevated inflation is simply a \u201ctransitory\u201d problem that will soon disappear. \u201cWe\u2019re going to be hitting 1.5% pretty soon,\u201d he told reporters earlier this month. \u201dIt\u2019s all coming down.\u201d<\/p>\n But Jared Bernstein<\/a>, a former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under Biden, disputes the notion that Biden and Trump were equally guilty of downplaying inflation. He said: \u201cWe were talking past people. They\u2019re telling people things that are false. In terms of ineffective messaging, those are equivalent. In terms of truthfulness, one is is honest and the other is false.\u201d<\/p>\n Bernstein, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress thinktank, added: \u201cThey\u2019re making a very consequential mistake, which is strongly, loudly asserting that people are better off than they know they are. What\u2019s fascinating about all this to me is that Donald Trump<\/a> believes, correctly, that he has a superpower. He can get his followers to believe whatever reality he puts out there, and that\u2019s worked for him for a very long time but it won\u2019t work on this. Affordability is kryptonite to his superpower because his followers know which way is up when it comes to prices.\u201d<\/p>\n