Trump Dismisses Affordability As Key Issue After GOP Losses

BY ANNIE LINSKEY AND MERIDITH MCGRAW

WASHINGTON— Republicans in Washington came away from this past week’s elections with a clear takeaway: focus on the high cost of living or risk big losses in next year’s midterms.

President Trump isn’t convinced.

The president said this past week that Republicans aren’t talking enough about his administration’s successes, and he dismissed questions about voters’ concerns about the economy. Most prices are on the downswing, he argued.

“Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down. And the press doesn’t report it,” Trump said this past week. “So, I don’t want to hear about the affordability. Because right now, we’re much less.”

That is at odds with government statistics and the views of many voters, according to pollsters and analysts. The Labor Department reported last month that consumer prices rose 3% in September from a year earlier, the fastest pace since January. In surveys, voters have said the costs of housing, groceries and utility bills are unmanageable. Democratic candidates who focused on affordability came out on top in Tuesday’s elections, handily beating their GOP challengers.

In the Oval Office Friday, Trump lashed out at reporters for pressing him on the cost of living. The GOP president called Democrats’ contention that affordability played a role in Tuesday’s election a “con job,” and he asked White House

press secretary Karoline Leavitt to help him make his case to reporters in the room.

Following the election, some of Trump’s own advisers said privately that the president would shift focus to domestic affairs after spending a chunk of his first nine months on foreign policy. “We need to focus on the home front,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media after the elections. “We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”

Behind the scenes, Trump has been irritated that Democrats are getting credit for their focus on affordability, according to an administration official. The president is attuned to voter concerns and regularly discusses the state of the economy with his team of economic advisers, including near-daily conversations with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the official said.

White House officials said Trump is expected to ramp up economic messaging in coming weeks. After Tuesday, conservative activist and former Trump administration official Steve Bannon interviewed Bessent, who made the case that the economy will improve as Trump’s policies are fully realized. “The house got burned down, and it takes a while to rebuild it,” Bessent said.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump inherited a bad economy and that the administration would “continue to emphasize” policies that are intended to cut costs, increase wages and spur investments in the U.S.

Privately, Republicans said they are worried that Trump seems reluctant to empathize with voters’ economic pain. And some Trump allies have been raising red flags for weeks about Republicans’ vulnerabilities over the economy.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) said in an interview Thursday night with CNN, “Affordability is a problem.”

“I go to the grocery store myself. Grocery prices remain high. Energy prices are high,” she said. “My electricity bills are higher here in Washington, D.C., at my apartment, and they’re also higher at my house in Rome, Ga.—higher than they were a year ago.”

Trump was swept back into office vowing to tame inflation and bring down the cost of living. During the campaign, he regularly criticized then-President Joe Biden for not doing enough to lower prices.

While tariffs haven’t driven prices up as much as economists initially expected, inflation is nonetheless frustrating consumers. Everyday items such as ground beef, coffee, bananas and dairy have all increased. Homes are still seen as unaffordable across the U.S. Retail power prices are up for many consumers. Friday, the president asked the Justice Department investigate what he alleged is a conspiracy by meatpacking companies to drive up prices, a move that echoed steps Biden took in office.

The Meat Institute, a trade association for meatpackers, didn’t directly comment on the probe but said that market transactions are transparent.

Annual inflation heated up slightly in recent months, though not as much as economists expected. September’s 3% rise in consumer prices from a year earlier was an uptick from August’s 2.9% pace. Private consulting groups are reporting a softening job market, with a slowdown in hiring.

The government shutdown means the U.S. hasn’t reported official jobs or unemployment data since Oct. 1. Consumer sentiment continued to slide in November, with the University of Michigan’s index among the lowest recorded in its decades of surveys.

Complicating matters, Trump is pushing for an overhaul in the economy to reshore industries that he acknowledges will cause turbulence until the changes he is seeking are fully realized. Surveys of businesses show the tariffs he has implemented as part of this strategy have created high uncertainty that is freezing investment and hiring decisions at some companies.

The Federal Reserve’s anecdotal survey of the economy from October found that manufacturing activity varied across the country and “most reports noted challenging conditions due to higher tariffs and waning overall demand.”

Since taking office in January, Trump has taken eight foreign trips and spent little time out talking to voters. Much of his domestic travel has entailed visits to his properties in Florida and New Jersey or to major sporting events.

Trump has focused in part on projects such as peace deals abroad and a $300 million ballroom. Democrats are planning to make the case that Trump is out of touch in campaign ads.

“He does a very good impersonation of Marie Antoinette in drag,” said Rahm Emanuel, a former Democratic Chicago mayor who is eyeing a 2028 presidential bid. “He is telling you he doesn’t really care.”

Emanuel, a former top presidential adviser to Barack Obama and Biden, said Trump is showing hallmarks of being isolated. “Every president loves the people who come in and tell them how great he is doing,” he said. “It is an illness of the Oval Office.”