Trump changes certain economic policies as affordability issue rises
With affordability increasingly becoming a top issue for Americans, President Donald Trump is changing course on some of his economic policies and proposing some new ones. Data shows money is part of the top four concerns among Americans today.
American affordability
The U.S. ranks 67th in affordability, according to U.S. News and World Report. Despite the president’s repeated claims to the contrary, data shows the prices of food, housing, child care, health care and utility costs have all been on the rise for years.
That same data shows costs are well up since Trump’s inauguration in January.
Numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show prices up 3% in September of this year compared to this same time last year.
Experts point to some of Trump’s policies as contributing factors.
“I think it’s clear to economists and anyone who looks at the data that things are getting more expensive, in part, due to the tariffs,” Kimberly Clausing, a professor of tax law and policy at the University of California Los Angeles, told Straight Arrow News. “The tariffs are a direct tax on imported goods, but they also affect the prices of domestic goods that compete with the imported goods, and so we’ve seen a lot of price pressure on all of those products.”
Clausing also pointed to Trump’s immigration policies as part of the price increases in certain sectors.
“There’s also been some increases in prices in construction and other industries that may be affected by the immigration clampdown, too, and so that can also affect affordability,” Clausing said.
Meanwhile, the president blamed higher prices on what he perceives as partisan news coverage.
“We did a great job on groceries and affordability,” Trump recently said. “The only problem is the fake news.”
The administration also attempted to place the blame on illegal immigration.
“On the contrary, immigration increases the labor supply and allows for construction costs to be lower, not higher,” Clausing said. “If you look at what’s happened in the industries that rely on informal labor, right, they’ve seen that that’s getting more and more expensive, and so they have to pass on these higher construction costs to the underlying projects.”
Policy changes
With affordability being such an issue and recent elections swept by the Democrats, particularly those running on platforms of lowering prices, the president has begun to alter certain policies to try and bring costs down.
Among those, reducing some of the tariffs he’s put into place.
“The tariff revisions are interesting in that they seem to be a recognition that tariffs are raising costs,” Clausing said. “So at least there’s been some learning there. But unfortunately, the share of the total tariffs that have been clawed back is still very small. So, when you’re looking at the overall effect, it’s still going to amount to maybe $1,700 or so for a typical American family over a year of higher costs due to these tariffs.”
The Yale Budget Lab estimated in October that the administration’s broad tariffs will cost the average American household $1,800 in 2025.
The president also floated the idea of tariff dividends, giving tariff rebate checks to Americans but Congress appears unlikely to approve that.
The president has also considered other measures in an attempt at bringing down costs, such as 50-year home mortgages.
“It’s only going to lower your payment a small amount, because it really increases interest to borrow on such a very long time frame,” Clausing said. “So, you’re going to be paying for 20 more years in order to get a couple hundred bucks off of the payment each month. But the net cost to households of paying for such a long time is going to be higher, and they’ll accumulate less wealth in their houses.”
In lieu of that, the president is also reportedly evaluating portable mortgages, which would allow homeowners to take their mortgage rate with them when they move.
Election impact
Pricing is a big part of why Trump got elected again.
“If you look at polling data, part of the reason that Trump was elected is people were very dissatisfied with the inflation during the Biden years, which peaked at over 9% in 2022, and some of that was due to COVID, but some of that was blamed on administration policies,” Clausing said. “And so, the hope with the Trump election was that the prices would go down.”
Since they haven’t, it could be a significant issue for Republicans in next year’s midterms.
“If you look at the economic policy portfolio, many of the key signature components of the president’s agenda actually have the opposite effect on prices — raising them rather than lowering them,” Clausing said. “So, you see a lot of discontent among independents and the voting population at large with affordability issues, with these continued high prices, with spikes in prices at the grocery store, some of which are related to the tariffs and that, I think, showed up already in these 2025 election rounds.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
