Trump Hits the Road to Convince America There’s No Affordability Crisis

President Donald Trump, facing pressure over cost-of-living concerns that have knocked his approval numbers down to the lowest point of his second term, hit the road Tuesday for a rally in Pennsylvania to convey a simple message: The economy is doing great, thank you very much.

Any message to the contrary, Trump said repeatedly, was both a “hoax” cooked up by his political opponents and also the fault of his presidential predecessor, Joe Biden.

“But they use the word ‘affordability,’ and that’s their only word. They say ‘affordability.’ And everyone says, ‘Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.’ No, our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country,” Trump said. “They always have a hoax.”

Trump returned to familiar boasts throughout the more than 90-minute speech, including his calls to “unleash” American energy production and bring down gas prices, one of the few areas where prices have fallen in recent months.

But Americans are notably less optimistic about the current state of the U.S. economy, opinion polls show. Seventy-six percent of respondents in a Fox News poll last month said they had a negative outlook on national economic conditions, a figure that gives Democrats optimism they can take back control of Congress in 2026.

In particular, grocery prices have spiked since Trump took office in January, with Consumer Price Index data finding that they’ve increased by roughly 2% to 3% year over year. Beef steaks, coffee and cereal have all become significantly more expensive, according to a Nasdaq analysis.

Trump paid little attention to those concerns Tuesday night, instead laying any blame for rising prices at Biden’s feet, while suggesting that he was working to get prices down on a variety of food items — most notably eggs.

“Look at that,” Trump said while pointing to a graph showing prices during his second term alongside similar data from Biden’s presidency. “Prices are coming down, it’s a hoax.”

Democrats have, in fact, agreed that focusing on affordability and high prices is their best path forward after their election wins last month, but Trump has received criticism from his own party, too.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was a staunch ally of the president until recently, has repeatedly criticized Trump for failing to keep domestic issues front and center, causing a split strong enough for Greene to announce she would resign from the House of Representatives in January.

Trump made fun of Democrats’ new direction while simultaneously acknowledging, albeit with few policy details, that trade-offs have to be made in attempting to bring back American manufacturing.

In particular, he suggested that children of working-class Americans should learn to live with fewer material goods manufactured abroad — using dolls and pencils as examples.

“You can give up pencils,” Trump said. “They only need one or two. They don’t need that many, but you always need steel. You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter, two or three is nice.”

The administration spent time this week attempting to relieve the pressure that Trump’s tariffs are causing for American farmers. It announced $12 billion in subsidies for farmers affected by rising prices for goods, like fertilizer and farm equipment.

But on Tuesday, Trump suggested that criticism of his tariffs was due to the “fake news media” — and doubled down on the policy.

“My favorite word is ‘tariff’ … I love it more than any other word in the dictionary,” Trump said on Monday. “Tariffs are bringing us hundreds of billions of dollars.”