The President of the United States, Donald Trump, returned this Tuesday evening to the territory of the political campaign, Pennsylvania, the most decisive state in the last presidential elections. He specifically visited Monroe County, an election trench that traveled to … Republican hands.
But the American president did not do it to win an election – there is nothing at stake for the moment and he cannot run for a third term – but to defend the start of his second term.
Concretely, to defend his economic management, called into question by persistent inflation, by a dizzying rise in the cost of living – factors which favored important Democratic electoral victories last month – a problem on which Trump, although he based his political rise and his return to power last year, suffers today.
Trump held a rally at a casino in Mount Pocono, eastern Pennsylvania, a mountainous and tourist region – where suburbs and rural areas coexist – which swung last year in his favor. This is the first stage of the tour of key political territories that the New York billionaire plans to undertake to defend his economic management in a period of doubt.
Last January, the North American president promised as soon as he took office the return of the “golden age” for the United States and today he boasts of the multi-million dollar investments that he has promoted, of the fall in prices, of the “economic miracle” that the world’s leading power is experiencing.
“We inherited the highest prices of all time, we’re lowering them,” he told his supporters, adding that “we’re fighting inflation, we’re destroying it, and you get higher wages. The only thing that really goes up is the stock market and your pension plan.
The other truth
But Americans live another reality. According to the latest official data available, inflation remains at a level of 3%, the same level as when Trump returned to the White House. Housing is impossible in many US markets, as are energy prices, despite Trump’s efforts to lower them.
“Prices are coming down a lot,” “we’ve stopped inflation,” Trump proclaimed in a speech lasting about an hour and a half, in which he let the economic message delve into criticism of Somali immigrants, transgender people and his predecessor. Joe Bidenor questions of foreign policy (“now we are going to go there by land”, he confirmed about Venezuela after a campaign of attacks on drug boats).
Trump mocked affordability, the issue that dominates American politics. As on previous occasions, he called it a “hoax” on the part of the Democrats.
The polls and the electoral thermometer indicate the opposite. Polls show Trump failing on the central issue of his arrival in politics and his return to power: the economic message, dedicated to the impoverished middle and working classes, and which facilitated his return to power last year with popular frustration over soaring inflation during Biden’s presidency.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, published shortly before the rally in Pennsylvania, places him with 41% approval for his economic management, a little above last month’s 38%. The latest Washington Post and ABC News poll gives him 37% approval in economics. And the defeats of Republican candidates last month – particularly the decisive gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia – have a lot to do with the state of the economy and the cost of living.
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