During the election cycle, Republicans ran a campaign on three issues, immigrants, transgender people, and inflation. While they spent more time and advertising talking about the previous two issues, most of the people who voted for Donald Trump stated they did so because he was going to “end inflation”. The problem with this is that most people who voted for him because of this don’t actually understand how inflation works.
Let’s start with the definition of inflation. Economic inflation is the general rise in the cost of goods and services over a given time period, usually a year. Inflation can, however, be tracked by a monthly metric as well so it’s not just comparing year to year but that is the usual way it’s measured. This means that it’s simply a way to track if things are getting more expensive or less expensive. Inflation is affected by things like the cost of materials, labor costs, tax cuts and increases, higher demand, and economic policies.
Most of us in school were taught the concept of supply and demand. If you weren’t, do a google search. It’s not a hard concept. The basics of inflation are the more it costs to make something and get it to the consumer, the more it will end up costing the consumer. This a really broad stroke on the definition as inflation, like everything else when it comes to economics, can get complicated very quickly.
The reason I wanted to talk about inflation is back the idea that Donald Trump will actually “save” the economy and bring down inflation. Let’s be honest, the economy isn’t bad right now. I know it will hurt some people’s feelings to say this, but Donald Trump is the reason for the near record inflation that we all experienced at the end of his first term and the beginning of Biden’s term.
The first time Trump was elected, he inherited an economy that was very strong. It was the result of eight long years of hard work by the Obama administration. Donald Trump came into office and immediately began telling everyone who would listen how “Obama made bad deals for America” as he set out to undo everything that administration had done just because Barack Obama was involved in it.
Trump’s economic policies during his first term were nearly nonexistent. Like with many things, he didn’t have a plan. He just made it up on the fly. During his campaign he never mentioned tariffs the first time he took office. Suddenly he enacted them, and foreign products started to cost more. Add in that he gave a substantial tax break to corporations and the wealthy, and it was obvious to every economist out there that inflation was going to rise, and we would head towards a recession.
Now, I am willing to give a little leeway here. It wasn’t long into Trump’s first term that Covid hit, and things went from bad to worse. I can admit, some of the inflation could have been affected by the pandemic. We saw businesses close, sales tank, and supply chains come unraveled. However, Trump’s actions were not enough to save the economy. In fact, the one thing he did enact to help keep small businesses afloat was riddled with misinformation, fraud, and abuse. The Department of Justice is still prosecuting individuals for their schemes wrapped up in this debacle.
When Donald Trump left office in 2020, inflation was over 9%. This means things cost 9% higher than they did the year before. But that wasn’t the only result of inflation. The average wage of the American worker didn’t increase in accordance with the inflation. Add in the fact that more and more business filed bankruptcy and closed during his first term and a skyrocketing unemployment rate and that was the perfect recipe to destroy a once healthy economy.
During Joe Biden’s term as president, he tackled inflation with economic policies designed to create jobs that were lost, grow businesses, and help reduce the costs of goods by removing the previous administrations disastrous tariffs. Biden focused on infrastructure, technology, clean energy, and manufacturing to help bring both inflation and unemployment down. His strategies worked. At the time I write this, inflation is down to 2.6%. That is lower than the long-term average which is 3.28%.
That is a much better number than when Biden took office in 2021. However, Trump and his MAGA Republicans continue to talk about how our economy is broken. How Biden and Harris destroyed what he had built during his term. How things were more expensive than they were when he took office. In the later part of the campaign, Trump started using the slogan “Harris broke it, Trump will fix it.” I heard post-election interviews with people talking about the price of eggs. Yet, after the election, when Trump was declared the winner, he and the Republicans changed their tune suddenly. As if overnight, the economy was magically better than they said. If that is true, then its not because of the economic policies of Donald Trump.
I want everyone who reads this to take a moment and think about it. For those who voted for Donald Trump because of inflation, let me ask you this. Do you really believe that a man who tanked the economy with radical and disastrous policies during his first term should have a second chance to do so again? Should we really be taking economic advice and direction from a man who has failed at business more times than the average billionaire? Should we really follow economic direction from a man who has filed bankruptcy more times than most corporations?
Forget all the other insane and terrifying things he has said for a moment. This man has blatantly said how he plans to cut taxes for corporations and impose tariffs on all good coming into the United States. He has proposed a 10% to 15% tariff on all goods from foreign nations. He has proposed a 60% to 100% tariff on goods from China alone. Think about how many things in your household are made in China. Think about how many things in your life are made in foreign countries. All of those things are going to get more expensive.
Some out there are going to believe the idea that these foreign countries are simply going to “eat” the cost. First of all, that’s not how business works. Second, didn’t he say the same thing about Mexico paying for a wall on the US – Mexico border? And third, do you really expect a nation like China to just absorb that cost to keep doing business with us when our leaders talk about how horrible of a nation they are? Of course not. To believe this is like believing Jesus was a white man. The facts just don’t back up the claims.
To those who voted for Trump, remember this. None of his economic policies will actually help you. Not a single one. He has told you several times he plans to make sure the wealthy stay that way. He has only talked about cutting corporate taxes and taxes of the wealthy. He has talked about imposing a hidden tax on all goods coming into America. In his first term, he failed to restart American manufacturing. He caused inflation and unemployment to reach some of the highest levels it ever has. He took credit for work that wasn’t his and put blame on others for the work he did do. Donald Trump isn’t going to fix anything. I want you all to think about this when those eggs you were complaining about cost fifteen times more than they did before.
-Robin Alura
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