During the campaign, President Trump couldn't talk enough about affordability. He promised that if he were to retake the White House, he would act on many fronts.
“We will target everything from car affordability to housing affordability to insurance costs to supply chain issues,” he announced at a campaign rally in Asheville, North Carolina, last year.
“Starting today and the day I take the oath of office, we will quickly lower prices and make America affordable again,” he added.
For the past week he could hardly stand to hear that word.
Since Democrats won electoral victories last week on platforms focused on lowering the cost of living, Mr. Trump has been furiously confronted with the reality that he has lost ground on an issue that helped him win a second term.
With tirades on social media and misleading claims about the economy, Mr. Trump and his Cabinet have sought to reclaim a message of affordability that has buoyed Democrats and resonates with an American electorate that resents his economic agenda.
In the days following this month's election, the president struggled to craft a coherent and consistent message on the issue. He called affordability a “new word” and said Republicans haven’t talked about it enough. He then called it a “fraud” by Democrats. Finally, he explained, “I don’t want to hear about affordability.”
By the end of the week, Mr. Trump was so disturbed by questions about the issue that he attacked a reporter and stopped a news conference with the Hungarian prime minister so that his press secretary could come in and defend his record.
“The reason I don’t want to talk about affordability — everyone knows it’s far more affordable under Trump than under sleepy Joe Biden,” he said.
In the week before the election, Mr. Trump was on a trip to Asia, showcasing his ability to negotiate trade and peace deals abroad, while thousands of federal workers missed their paychecks and millions of low-income Americans were expected to lose food assistance. When he returned, he attended a lavish Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar-a-Lago.
On social media, Trump posted incessantly about the new Lincoln bathroom, renovated in black and white marble with gold faucets and light fixtures, as well as renovations at the Kennedy Center, which he said would feature marble and “excellent, high-quality carpets.”
The contributions served as fodder for Mr. Trump's opponents, particularly Democrats in Congress, who have withheld their votes to reopen the government over the past six weeks to prevent health care costs for some Americans from skyrocketing in the federal market.
Although the Senate focused on ending the shutdown without an agreement to extend expiring health insurance subsidies, many Democrats vowed to make health insurance costs a dominant issue in next year's midterm elections. Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, said Sunday night he would oppose the deal to reopen the government because it “still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they will pay for their health care or whether they can afford to get sick.”
As Mr. Trump sought to recalibrate his economic messaging after the election, he claimed there was “no inflation,” gas prices were near $2 and food prices were “down sharply.” To illustrate this, he repeatedly pointed to a report from Walmart that showed the cost of a Thanksgiving meal would be 25 percent lower than under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“According to Walmart, 2025 Thanksgiving Dinner under Trump is 25% lower than 2024 Thanksgiving Dinner under Biden,” Trump wrote in a post on Thursday. “My costs are lower than the Democrats in all areas, especially oil and gas! So the Democrats' 'affordability' issue is DEAD! Stop lying!!!”
Mr. Trump risks finding himself in a similar position to his predecessor if he defends his record by pointing to statistics that fail to capture the troubling reality felt by many Americans.
The latest government data shows that inflation is continuing and is even rising slightly in the latest consumer report. Since he took office, food prices have risen. Experts are divided over whether Mr. Trump's policies have led to a drop in gasoline prices, which are around $3 a gallon. And the Thanksgiving meal cost Mr. Trump cited comes with a caveat: This year's Walmart package includes fewer items, analysis has shown.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that a majority of Americans say they are spending more on food and utilities than they did a year ago, and many blame Mr. Trump. A recent NBC News poll found that only 30 percent of voters believe Mr. Trump has met their expectations on tackling inflation and the cost of living.
Even some MAGA supporters admitted that Mr. Trump's claim that the cost of living would go down didn't add up.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Republican from Georgia who has become disillusioned with her party and Mr. Trump on some issues, questioned the president's portrayal, saying in an interview on CNN that “affordability is an issue.”
“I go to the grocery store myself,” she said. “Food prices remain high. Energy prices are high. My electric bills are higher here in Washington, D.C., at my apartment, and they are also higher at my house in Rome, Georgia – higher than they were a year ago.”
The White House on Sunday continued to defend Mr. Trump's record and blamed Mr. Biden and the news media for the state of the economy. In a statement, a spokesman pointed to lower inflation, cheaper eggs and Trump's efforts to lower prescription drug costs as evidence that the president was prioritizing affordability.
“President Trump has been aggressively addressing Joe Biden's inflation and affordability crises since day one of his presidency, when he signed a series of executive orders aimed at reducing energy and regulatory costs,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
“The President and administration will continue to deliver historic trade deals, investment and economic relief for the American people – the fake news media should try to honestly report on these initiatives and their results for a change.”
And on television, Mr. Trump's Cabinet members painted an optimistic picture of the economy as they pressed the issue of affordability.
“Energy prices and gasoline prices have fallen sharply and we're doing what we can every day,” Finance Minister Scott Bessent said on ABC's “This Week.” “I think we are on a very good path to lower prices.”
Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said Mr. Trump would make up for Mr. Biden's mistakes. “So we see that inflation is under control and the economy is booming, but we 100 percent understand why people are still doing poorly because we haven't made up all the headroom that was lost under Joe Biden,” he said on CBS' “Face the Nation.”
But some White House officials have acknowledged that Mr. Trump still has a lot of work to do to convince the American people that he is trying.
“We need to focus on the home front,” Vice President JD Vance wrote in a social media post after last week’s election. “The President has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome was not built in a day. We will continue to work to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that is the yardstick by which we will ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”
James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff, said in an interview with Politico last week that Mr. Trump would talk more about the cost of living in the coming months.
“The president is very focused on what's going on and recognizes as much as anyone that it takes time to turn the economy around,” Blair said, “but all the fundamentals are there and I think you'll see him very, very focused on prices and cost of living.”
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, an economic policy group, said the issue of affordability has clearly become “existential” for Mr. Trump. But she said it would take more than just talking about it to convince voters.
“I don’t think Americans’ attitudes about the economy and Trump’s economic policy aspirations will change until the facts on the ground change,” Dr. Owens. “It's its one strength that has now turned into a pretty significant weakness, and we're starting to see bumps in the data that we haven't seen in over 15 years.”
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump signaled he was bracing for the growing frustration.
On Friday evening, he announced that he would direct the Justice Department to investigate whether meatpacking companies engaged in “collusion” and drove up beef prices. On Saturday, he announced a proposal to redirect health care subsidies paid to insurance companies into Americans' savings accounts. On Sunday morning, he proposed paying out $2,000 in dividends from customs revenues — “(not including high-income earners),” he wrote.
But on Sunday afternoon, as he flew back to Washington to attend a football game after a weekend of golf at his West Palm Beach resort, Mr. Trump's attention was back on a project that had captured his undivided attention.
“The main entrance to the new White House Ballroom!” Mr Trump posted a picture of the progress of his newly decorated space on his social media account.