Trump Dismisses Economic Anxiety at His Own Peril

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

 

‘The economy,” President Donald Trump told Laura Ingraham this week, “is my thing.”

 

How true these words are, although not necessarily in the sense that Trump meant them. It has now been nearly ten months since the man took office, and, churlish little ingrates that they are, the country’s voters have concluded that this fact accords him — rather than his predecessor — responsibility for the country’s political problems. Preceding the 2024 election, Trump promised obsessively that he would immediately fix the macroeconomic mistakes that were made by Joe Biden. Inflation would dissipate. Prices would drop. Jobs would appear on every tree. “From the day I take the oath,” Trump vowed in August of last year, “we will rapidly drive prices down and make America affordable again.”

 

Trump took that oath, but, as of yet, his auguries have not come to fruition. In theory, that is forgivable: Economies are complicated, unwieldy, and, in most circumstances, mercifully immune from presidential rhetoric. In practice, however, it is a serious problem — and one that is only made worse by Trump’s inexplicable decision to dismiss the very concerns that he once courted. Asked about the public’s growing worries this week, the president suggested that there was nothing wrong with the status quo and implied that he did not understand why Americans were distressed. Such fears, Trump contended, were the product of a “con job by Democrats.” The polls, he proposed, were “fake.” Indeed, he concluded, “we have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.”

 

It is strange that any president would believe that he could soothe anxiety with belligerence. But Donald Trump? The man who watched Joe Biden blow up his administration in precisely this manner? As Oscar Wilde might have said, to lose one presidency over economic angst may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.

 

As his campaign speeches comprehensively confirm, Trump was aware that he was set to inherit an economy with which the public was dissatisfied. And yet, like President Biden before him, he mistook his victory for a mandate, his desires for reality, and his base for the public at large. Irrespective of one’s view of the merits of tariffs per se, it ought to have been thoroughly obvious to President Trump that the imposition of a slew of draconian import taxes would make his goal of lower costs that much harder. Likewise, it should be clear that his latest brilliant idea — to send out more than $300 billion worth of stimulus checks — is unlikely to help reverse inflation. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex realm, Trump could have done a great deal worse than to set “Whatever Joe Biden didn’t do” as his guiding economic philosophy. That, instead, he is systematically copying Biden’s errors almost defies belief.

 

Uncomfortable though it might have been, given his incorrigibly mercurial mien, Trump’s best bet upon re-elevation would have been to ask the country for patience. “My predecessor messed everything up,” he could have said, “and it will take a couple of years to fix.” Such an approach has many charms. First, it inoculates its bearer against the accusation that he neither knows about — nor cares about — the people’s misgivings. Second, it sets a longer time frame within which its promulgator might be judged. Third, it helps manage expectations regardless of the eventual outcome. It is true, of course, that the president will be chastised if the economy does not improve during the established period. But that is true whatever he says. By asking for time, Trump would have given himself a reasonable shot at being seen as the architect of a comeback. If things went well — even if just coincidentally — it would have looked as if he was responsible for the good news. If things went badly, he would at least have looked as if he had tried. By rushing ahead with other priorities — and then stupidly insisting that everything is perfect — Trump has selected the worst possible course. As ever, a Hail Mary does not a strategy make.

 

Difficult though it has proven to impress upon Trump’s most ardent fans, the median American voter does not, in fact, think that their man is a pristine envoy sent by God himself. Rather, Trump is tolerated as an alternative to the crazy Democrats, as a voice of common sense on issues such as the border, and, above all, as the guy who presided over the 2019 economic boom, which is still widely looked back upon as the last golden moment before Covid-19 made everything weird. As a candidate in 2024, Trump was, indeed, seen as the guy whose “thing” was the economy. If, in yet another arrogant fit of ill-discipline, he lets that slip away, he will swiftly discover that there is not much left to keep him, or his party, in the public’s fleeting political affections.