For Trump, Soaring Prices Test Voters’ Finances and Patience

Swept into power by voters who were frustrated with the nation’s economic trajectory, President Trump promised at his inauguration to “bring prices down.”

But that was January 2025, more than a year before the White House would forge ahead with an agenda that has sent inflation roaring back, testing the patience — and the finances — of a cost-wary American electorate once again.

For Mr. Trump, the nation’s political and economic strains are laid bare in a series of dour reports released over the past two weeks. Consumer prices last month rose at their fastest clip in about three years, outpacing workers’ wages, while businesses saw their costs increase at a rate not seen since 2022.

Americans are racking up more debt. Families are saving less. And a key measure of consumer confidence dipped to an all-time low this month. The anxiety has bled into recent political polls, which have registered broad public disapproval of Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy.

At the heart of matter is the war with Iran, which sent the average gallon of gasoline to about $4.52 nationally, according to AAA. That is a more than 40 percent jump from a year ago, an uptick that has cut across the global economy, affecting everything from the cost of workers’ daily commutes to the prices of goods at grocery stores.

Yet the president has largely dismissed those recent signals, telling reporters at one point last week: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”

Mr. Trump had been asked about the extent to which the economy factored into his plans to end the war, and responded that disarmament was his sole concern. Otherwise, the president has maintained that the U.S. economy is strong and will rebound quickly once the war concludes, precipitating a rapid fall in gas prices in the United States.

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who has advised Mr. Trump, said the recent turbulence was not a “surprise.” But he acknowledged that voters might not be forgiving come November’s midterm election, given that the president promised he would bring down the cost of living.

“Republicans could face a tsunami election in November if inflation continues to stay high,” said Mr. Moore, who described gas prices as “the chief gauge people use to determine how the economy is doing.”

The jump in fuel costs is only the latest blow for American families, who have suffered through years of rising prices, high interest rates and a softening labor market — as well as much longer-running concerns about the affordability of housing, child care and other essentials.

Add on mounting concerns that the arrival of artificial intelligence could yield mass job losses and Americans have plenty of reason to be worried about their financial well-being, said David Tinsley, an economist at the Bank of America Institute.

“It’s one thing after another, and I think that is why people feel so bad,” he said. “It’s quite hard to point to things that people would feel great about, that would inspire a lot of optimism, unless you’re at the top of the income distribution.”

At the start of the year, Mr. Trump seemed ready to hit the 2026 campaign trail and claim credit for an economy on the upswing. In some of its earliest forecasts, the White House believed that its agenda, particularly its recent round of expensive tax cuts, would seed the conditions for higher wages, more jobs and new investments over the coming year, yielding benefits that voters would remember once they arrived at the ballot box.

But then Mr. Trump began to bomb Iran in February, which upended the global economy by snarling its energy supply. Far from the boom once envisioned, analysts have since broadly revised their projections, anticipating that sky-high oil will slow growth, worsen unemployment and raise prices, meting out the greatest damage to families that earn the least.

“These are the exact kind of spikes that are going to hit low-income people the hardest, at the exact same time that their incomes are slowing the most,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy for the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive group that focuses on cost-of-living issues. “I totally understand why people are really mad right now.”

Mr. Jacquez served under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who strained early in the 2024 election to convince Americans that the economy was good when their gas and grocery bills said otherwise. Stung by the downturn of the Covid-19 pandemic, voters did not accept that argument, and they returned Mr. Trump to office.

During the presidential race, Mr. Trump promised to bring down inflation and restore a sense of normalcy after years of economic tumult. Once elected, however, he began unleashing chaos of his own making, chiefly through his eye-watering tariffs, which caused import prices to rise. And just as those effects had started to calm, the president commenced a war that drove up the cost of gas, the one product where the price is posted in giant numbers alongside every highway in America.

“They’re the two major decision points of his presidency, and their impact on domestic prices is to unequivocally make them higher,” Mr. Jacquez said.

Despite the mounting challenges, the White House has remained bullish about the nation’s economic course. Last Sunday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, mused on Fox News that the nation’s gross domestic product, a measure of its output, could top 6 percent this year. (Most private forecasters expect the economy to grow at less than half that rate.)

Mr. Trump and his aides have also pointed repeatedly to the stock market, which has posted a series of record trading days during the war, primarily driven by optimism around artificial intelligence. So, too, has the White House found reason for celebration in the labor market, after employers added 115,000 jobs last month, surpassing expectations.

Pierre Yared, the acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, predicted last week that consumer prices would “go back down” once the war ended. That, he added, would relax pressure on families, who would see wages continue to grow “following the tailwinds of the economy.”

“Consumers are continuing to spend, and they do seem to be looking through the shock,” Mr. Yared said. “It looks to us like consumers understand the situation is temporary.”

There is little evidence so far that Americans’ anxiety about the economy is causing them to pull back their spending. Retail sales were solid in April, data released on Thursday showed, continuing a pattern of resilience that has repeatedly defied forecasters’ predictions of a slowdown.

But that strength is being driven, at least partly, by wealthy households, which have been insulated from economic headwinds by a steadily rising stock market. Lower- and middle-income households are the ones bearing the brunt of slower wage growth and rising prices. Larger tax refunds have helped many families offset higher costs, but that effect is fading.

“There is a bit of a buffer from increased tax returns,” said Justin Weidner, an economist at Deutsche Bank. “The consumer has a bit of a buffer in the near term, but the longer gas prices remain high, the more precarious the situation could get.”

Taken together, the conditions have left investors convinced that the Federal Reserve is not going to slash interest rates this year, as Mr. Trump has vigorously sought. Even after securing a new chair for the central bank — Kevin M. Warsh, who was confirmed by the Senate on Wednesday — policymakers seem inclined to wait out the current uncertainty before resuming their cuts.

“We think there is a narrow path to being able to get a cut in, but I would say it is very slim,” said Josh Hirt, a senior economist at Vanguard, adding that it “would definitely depend” on a swift unwinding of the war with Iran.

Yet the president’s aides have appeared to dismiss investors’ conclusions about the Fed. In an interview on the sidelines of trade talks in China, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, told CNBC that inflation would moderate quickly, allowing Mr. Warsh to cut rates soon.

“I actually think he’s going to be in a very good position,” the secretary said of Mr. Warsh, “because we may get a series, one or two more hot inflation numbers, but then I think we’re going to see substantial disinflation.”

Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Mr. Trump’s approach to the economy had been baffling, especially coming off the experience of the Biden administration.

“I’ve been struck, even before the Iran war, with the degree to which President Trump is making the same mistakes as President Biden,” Mr. Strain said. “We’ve had two presidents in a row who have seen consumer prices going up on their watch, who have dismissed those price increases out of hand as temporary, transitory, not real in some measure.”

Both presidents had also “politically chosen to downplay the importance of price increases in the lives of voters,” Mr. Strain added.

“There have been an astonishing number of own goals in the last year and a half,” he said.