President Donald Trump has given his grade an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” grade to his economy. In today’s Roll Call, The Winston Group’s David Winston writes about what voters will be looking at to determine the president’s success on the economy.
So, what goes into the voters’ report card as they head into next year’s election? And what have we seen recently that is driving the grade they give him and his congressional counterparts?
First, the inflation rate rarely goes below 0, so the idea that all prices collectively will go down is unlikely. The key is slowing the rate of increase so that wages are rising at a faster rate, and that relationship is what determines whether people think things are improving.
When wages outpace inflation, people have more purchasing power and can do more. But under Biden, over his four-year term, prices went up 21.4 percent, while weekly wages went up 16.7 percent. That is a significant loss of purchasing power. Losing almost 5 percent of your earnings to inflation, when many families were already living paycheck to paycheck, was an overwhelming motivator for a policy change. Biden’s peak for year-to-year inflation was in June 2022, when it hit 9.1 percent, the highest in four decades.
When Trump took office, the CPI was 3.0 percent, and in the recent September report it was still 3.0 percent. However, while prices have increased 2.2 percent since he was inaugurated, weekly wages have gone up 2.6 percent — meaning weekly wages have increased more than prices.
Read the full piece here.
