During a 2016 fundraiser, Hillary Clinton infamously claimed that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into… the basket of deplorables.” Yet, a year into his second term, their supposedly equally repugnant leader is endlessly attacked as progressives invent a hopefully winning blue-wave issue for the upcoming midterm elections. And that incessantly repeated contrivance is that Trump’s deplorable economy is not affordable.
Yet, that groupthink conclusion, based more on Trump Derangement Syndrome than on objective fact, is as laughable as it is desperate. And that is especially apparent when comparing the president’s economic achievements to his predecessor’s failures.
Most obviously, Biden’s misnamed $1.9 trillion so-called “American Rescue Plan” injected too much cash into an economy still reeling from lockdowns, resulting in a sharp rise in consumer prices.
Overheating the economy while supply chains were still broken supercharged inflation, rising from 1.4 percent on the day Biden took office to a forty-year high of 9.1 percent 18 months later. For context, prices rose faster than at any time since Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.
The Biden administration claimed that the inflation was “transitory,” yet it produced an average monthly cost spike of over 5 percent, and an almost 22 percent cumulative price increase during Biden’s term. That “transitory” claim was so ludicrous that even former Obama officials criticized the scale of Biden’s spending, which subsequently created an additional affordability challenge.
Namely, to cool Biden’s overheated economy, the Federal Reserve Board predictably raised interest rates 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023. As a result, mortgage rates rose from 3 percent in 2021 to nearly 8 percent in 2023, making homeownership unaffordable for many first-time buyers.
To make matters worse, Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and stricter drilling regulations raised fuel prices by constraining supply. As expected, that misguided decision rippled through the economy, leading to “sticker shock” pricing for gasoline, utilities, groceries, and virtually everything else.
In the end, even though Biden apologists pointed to a nominal wage increase during his term, real wages lagged, creating affordability issues. As a result, polls consistently showed approval for Biden’s handling of the economy at little better than the 35th percentile.
But when objectively assessing Trump’s efforts to increase “kitchen table” affordability in his second term, the comparison to his progressive predecessor becomes even more striking.
Most notably, before Operation Epic Fury, inflation had fallen to 2.4 percent, and unemployment, while still too high, was down to 4.3 percent. Most grocery prices had decreased, and for the first time in four years, the cost for gasoline was often below $3.00 a gallon.
What’s more, following Trump’s negotiations with pharmaceutical companies, many drug prices are falling toward most-favored-nation levels. Boosting purchasing power, nominal wages have risen 4.3 percent, and the stock market has reached historic highs.
Yet even though the Fed has been reluctant to lower interest rates since Trump’s inauguration, borrowing terms for new car loans, mortgages, and credit card APRs remain lower than when Biden left the White House.
But affordable, not deplorable, evidence of Trump’s policies is even more obvious when highlighting his structural changes to the economy. For tax years 2025 through 2028, there is no longer a tax on tips up to $25,000, and for joint filers, there is no tax on overtime to that same amount. The tax rates across seven brackets have been reduced, and the standard deduction has increased.
Additionally, if purchasing a U.S.-assembled vehicle, there is now a loan interest deduction of up to $10,000 and an increased estate tax exemption of up to $15 million.
However, for many single-filing taxpayers 65 and older, the newly added Senior Bonus Deduction of $6,000, when combined with their existing deductions, provides a “tax shield” of over $24,000. Especially for low-income seniors, this sum can effectively zero out the federal tax bill for as many as 30 percent of all retirees, including any Social Security payments owed.
But that’s not all. Trump has increased the child tax credit and established a $1,000 tax-deferred, interest-bearing account for all children born between 2025 and 2028.
While all these affordability-boosting initiatives have occurred in the first year of Trump’s second term, there is still a long way to go to recover from the disaster of Biden’s presidency.
But one thing is certain. And that is, after objectively reviewing Trump’s economic accomplishments, anyone still believing them to be more deplorable than affordable should realize that millions of Americans will look no further than their improved standard of living to increasingly know better.
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