No. of Recommendations: 7
What [voters in 2024] did hear was Donald Trump promising not just to reduce inflation but to bring prices way back down. And many of them believed him.
Of course, Trump didn’t have a plan, or even a concept of a plan, about how to accomplish this. Instead he imposed tariffs and began deporting immigrant workers, both of which raised prices.
So prices haven’t come down; instead, inflation has accelerated. And the job market has gotten worse. Thanks to the shutdown, we’re not getting official employment numbers, but I’ve been looking at private surveys. One number I find especially striking is the Conference Board’s “labor market differential,” the difference between the percentage of Americans who say jobs are “plentiful” and those who say jobs are “hard to get.” This number is way down, which says that ordinary Americans perceive a very tough job market.
Pretty clearly, many Americans now believe that they were lied to. My guess (we’ll know more in a few days) is that this is especially true for Hispanic voters, who swung to Trump believing that he would deliver prosperity and are swinging hard back to Democrats now that he hasn’t.
It also surely doesn’t help that Trump and his minions keep insisting that everything is great, that there is no inflation and the economy is booming. This doesn’t persuade anyone not in the cult and just makes them look out of touch. Which they are.
——Economist Paul Krugman
