Trump Pushes The ‘Affordability’ Reset Button 

On Wednesday night, President Trump attempted a reset of the first year of his presidency. It was an effort to seize the narrative away from the Left, which keeps hammering away about “affordability.”

To set the scene: The president obviously is looking forward to the 2026 midterm elections, but Republicans are not in amazing shape for them. They’re down on the generic congressional ballot by a significant amount at this point. If the elections were held today, there is a high likelihood that Republicans would lose somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 seats.

With that said, the president is attempting to convince Americans that things are getting better.

It was great that he showed charts, a Reagan-esque move. President Reagan used to do this back in the 80s. He would do a national address, and he would take out actual charts and try to educate the American people about what was happening.

President Trump did that last night. He showed Joe Biden’s price increases and Trump’s price decreases in a wide variety of areas, ranging from hotel rates up 37.4% under Joe Biden, down 5.1% under Trump; propane rates 24.9% up under Biden, down 4.2% under Trump; gasoline up nearly 31% under Joe Biden, down 7% under Trump; sporting events up nearly 50% under Joe Biden, down almost 10% under Trump.

Those are all good things to show the American people.

The one problem is that when you look at a chart like that, you think that the baseline price has gone down from where it was before Joe Biden — but that’s not true. If the price rises 40% under Joe Biden and then comes down 10% under Donald Trump, it’s still higher than it was before Joe Biden took office.

That’s the embedded part of the economy that President Trump is not really going to be able to wipe away. Years of inflation cannot be wiped away absent some sort of economic downturn.

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But the president was right to point out real wage increases under his tenure and wage decreases under Joe Biden. The private sector wage growth averaged $1,048 since he returned to the White House, versus losses of almost $3,000 under Joe Biden. The president showed the new yearly mortgage cost increase under Joe Biden was up almost $15,000, versus Trump’s new yearly mortgage cost decrease, down almost $3,000.

When he referred to Obamacare, he pointed out it’s not the Republicans’ fault, it’s the Democrats’ fault. It’s the Unaffordable Care Act.

And that is true.

So here’s the Big Question: Why aren’t Americans feeling it?

There are a few reasons. One is that Americans expect the amounts they currently pay to actively plunge, not just from where they were last year, but from where they were three or four years ago. But if you radically inflate prices and then decrease them marginally, people are still going to feel priced out.

A second reason is that many of the items the president cited as having dropped in price are not the items that Americans most commonly buy. The number one complaint you will hear from Americans right now about pricing is in the grocery store. If you’re shopping for a family of four for a week of food, you’re now paying, in some cases, 30-40% more than you were just three or four years ago. And if the places that you most often shop are the places where you feel the most inflation and the most “unaffordability,” that’s what’s going to stick in your mind.

Yes, mortgage rates might be down, but how many people are actually taking out a new mortgage this year in the United States? Not very many.

If the thing you buy most frequently is up in price, you’re going to feel pressed. If the thing you buy once every 20 years is down in price, you’re not going to feel that quite as much because your last comp wasn’t last year, your last comp was probably ten years ago, or 15 or 20 years ago. If your last mortgage was taken out at 2.5% under the George W. Bush administration, and your new mortgage is being taken out at 5.75% under the Trump administration, you’re going to feel like things are more expensive, even though the mortgage rates are down from where they were a year or two ago.

But I’ve been saying for a while that “affordability” is a weasel word.

Affordability is vague. Affordability is a feeling. You can’t ask people, “Are things affordable?” and expect them to say yes. Virtually no one who is not truly wealthy thinks of things as “affordable.” For most of my life, everything felt unaffordable, and then at a certain point, we achieved a certain level of income where things felt more affordable.

But you have to move dramatically up in the income ladder in order for things to feel “affordable.” When you think about whether things are affordable or not, what you mean is, am I thinking about the price of the thing that I am buying?

“Affordability” is a feeling. It’s not a statistical fact.

Thus, President Trump dove into the facts, which was necessary and good.