When Donald Trump won his second presidential election in 2024, supporters crowed that this time would be different. Trump's sometimes chaotic instincts had been honed and refined into a populist-nationalist conservative policy agenda that was supposed to make Americans better off and build a broader, more durable right-wing coalition, with a particular appeal to working-class voters.

MAGA 2.0 would be predicated on a rejection, or at least a skepticism, of the free market, libertarian economics that Trumpian intellectuals insisted were hobbling the GOP. These ideas filtered up to the presidential ticket itself. In 2024, then-Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio)toldThe New York Timesthat mainstream economists were simply wrong about the effects of clamping down on immigration and the deployment of tariffs, and that free market libertarians were out of touch.

In many ways, the administration has governed accordingly. No, Trump hasn't abandoned capitalism entirely. But his second term has been a populist-statist-protectionist mishmash, with a heavy dollop of crony self-dealing.

That approach has left Americans worse off and struggling with economic uncertainty and the highest inflation in years. And it has resulted incratering approval ratingsfor the president and his party—including, notably, with thewhite, non-college-educated votersthe new Trumpism was supposed to win over.

There are many reasons for voters' turn against Trump, but one looms above all others: the persistently high cost of living, and rising energy and food prices in particular.

Trump has become the high-prices president. Voters correctly view those high prices as a direct consequence of his policies.

Three of Trump's signature initiatives are the war with Iran, crackdowns on immigration, and his on-again, off-again tariffs. All three have contributed to rising prices, especially on household essentials. This was borne out in the government's most recent inflation report, which showed the highest inflation rate in three years, a larger-than-expected increase driven by increasing energy and food prices. Wage gains have been eaten by inflation, leaving American families feeling squeezed and uncertain.

Voters see a direct connection between Trump's policies and the worsening economic situation, and it's not hard to understand why. There's plenty of evidence linking Trump's policies to higher prices and economic sclerosis, and the combination of tariffs and immigration restrictionism hasn't led to the boom in domestic manufacturing jobs Trump used to predict. On the contrary, recent research byeconomists at the University of Colorado Boulder looked at labor market changes in areas highly affected by immigration raids and found that employment for low-skilled, native-born mendroppedby 1.3 percent.

Notably, all three of Trump's signature initiatives—the war, the tariffs, and the immigration crackdowns—have been implemented through the executive branch. They are all a direct result of Trump's personal whims and preferences. Trump can't blame Congress or a political rival for policies that come directly from him.

What's more, Trump and other administration officials have at times all but admitted that their policies have pushed up prices on food and gas. After gas prices shot up in response to the war, Trump pushed tosuspendthe federal gas tax, an implicit nod to the war's impact on pump prices. Last October, Trump's Labor Departmentwarnedin a document that"the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens" threatened "the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers," drawing a direct link between immigrant workers and grocery prices. And recently, Trump proposedreducingbeef tariffs in response to the high price of meat—effectively acknowledging that trade levies make consumer goods more expensive. High prices are the crime, and Trump keeps admitting that he's the perpetrator.

Source: Drudge Report