After spending the early part of the Iran war trying to sell Americans on an economic message of short-term pain for long-term gain, President Donald Trump and his team have returned to their previous posture: Kevin Bacon in “Animal House.”
keep calmThey are effectively saying. Everything is fine.
It had a surprising and confusing political message before the war; It’s getting scarier and scarier now.
They used a version of this message in the fall. Although affordability concerns were increasingly a problem for Trump, he argued that prices were actually down — and substantially — even though they weren’t.
Today, the message is more: Despite what voters hear (or see at any local gas station), things are actually pretty good. And besides, the situation could be much worse.
“To be honest, we’re doing pretty well,” Trump told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired Wednesday, citing a resilient stock market.
When Bartiromo pushed back a bit, Trump argued that $92-per-barrel oil wasn’t so bad when you think you were talking about $200 per barrel.
“And you know what?” Trump added. “I’m so happy.”
Trump expanded on this optimistic line Thursday during a campaign event outside the White House and in Las Vegas that focused on tax cuts.
He said the inflation rate was “a very low number, and it’s still low.” That’s despite rising to its highest level in two years last month – and the effects of this war are expected to continue to grow. He referred to “our great economy”.
Asked about $4-per-gallon gas, he mentioned the stock market and said: “Everything is going really well.”
He reiterated that gas prices were not “much higher” than “they should be.” (Energy Secretary Chris Wright told NBC News a month ago that there’s a “very good chance” gas will be below $3 a gallon by summer.)
Trump has called inflation “fake” because of rising fuel and energy prices.
“During my first term we had the best economy in the history of our country,” Trump added. “And we’re blowing it out now — we’re blowing it out now.”
Others also appear on the same page.
At a briefing this week, White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt urged people to “look at how gas prices went down last year while this president was in office.” Even that’s not exactly an impressive statistic: gas was $3.11 a gallon when Trump was inaugurated, according to data from the Gas Body; By the time the war began it had fallen to a little over 10 cents.
And Treasury Secretary Scott Besant told CNBC this week that Trump was able to start a war because “the economy was in such good shape.” He also said in a briefing with Levitt that the economy remains “very strong.”
And in a Tax Day interview with National News Desk, Besant offered some particularly eyebrow-raising comments.
He claims that Americans are actually more sensitive about the economy than they let on.
“The consumer, while they may seem serious, is actually very excited,” he said, citing spending behavior.
When the reporter submits that Besant says people don’t feel Well but actually were acting Confidently, he indicated that this was not the case. He gave it to the people Actually sounds good About the economy, even if they don’t.
“Well, look into their hearts, they feel good,” Besant said. “I’m not sure what they’re telling the survey people.”
Bessent is not entirely independent here.
There is an argument that economic fundamentals are not as dire as Americans believe, as CNN’s David Goldman wrote in February before the war broke out. Consumer spending has been very strong in the post-Covid era.
The fact that the stock market continues to rise – and has now recovered its losses since the start of the war – seems to speak to this.
But the Biden administration made similar arguments after falling inflation rates, which didn’t work out so well for them in 2024, with former President Joe Biden’s approval numbers on the economy falling.
So to the extent that Bessant’s argument is now a guiding principle, it is indeed risky. Because Americans are telling those “survey people” something really “Scary” things.
Recently, the much-watched University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index hit a new record low in data spanning decades — only returned since World War II.
It is now lower not only than the post-Covid inflation spike, but also lower than during the Great Recession of the late 2000s and various other times of economic hardship in the late 20th century.
And the polls echo that pessimism.
For example, the most recent CNN poll from late March showed, only 23% of Americans labeled the economy as at least “somewhat good.” That number was lower only twice during Biden’s tenure, briefly in 2022.
The survey also showed:
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62% expect the economy to remain weak next year – the worst such finding in nearly three decades of CNN polling.
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More than 6 in 10 people labeled rising gas prices at least a “moderate hardship.”
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More than 6 in 10 said they have changed their spending habits in some way.
And perhaps more to the point, Americans say 65%-25% that Trump has made the economy worse rather than better.
That minus-40-point gap isn’t worse than before for Biden; That’s even worse than in January, when Trump was minus-23.
The war has clearly made the economy more of a liability for Trump. Maybe that will go away if there is a war.
But trying to convince voters that the economy is actually good, despite significant evidence to the contrary and their overwhelmingly negative feelings about it, doesn’t sound like a good strategy.
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