The border is secure, the government has been slashed, tariffs are in place, Most Favored Nation status has been achieved with major brands, and the Big Beautiful Bill is law. That leaves only two questions that matter: Will this work and will Americans feel the positive impacts in time for the midterms?
Last week, President Donald Trump delivered a short, sweet, and somewhat rushed address to the nation to recap the state of the country when he took office, his achievements and initiatives since taking office, and the state of the economy today. He began by claiming that “11 months ago I inherited a mess, and I’m fixing it. When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country, which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans. This happened during a Democrat administration, and it’s when we first began hearing the word ‘affordability’” before insisting “Over the past 11 months, we have brought more positive change to Washington than any administration in American history.” After recapping his unprecedented success securing the border, “For the past 7 months, 0 illegal aliens have been allowed into our country, a feat which everyone said was absolutely impossible” and resolving thorny international issues, “I’ve restored American strength, settled 8 wars in 10 months, destroyed the Iran nuclear threat, and ended the war in Gaza, bringing for the first time in 3,000 years peace to the Middle East and secured the release of the hostages, both living and dead,” the President devoted most of his time to the economy. In that regard, he recapped price increases that occurred under his predecessor with some slightly exaggerated and cherry picked decreases that have occurred since he took office, complete with a few charts for comparison. “The last administration and their allies in Congress looted our treasury for trillions of dollars, driving up prices and everything at levels never seen before. I am bringing those high prices down and bringing them down very fast. Let’s look at the facts. Under the Biden administration, car prices rose 22%, and in many states 30% or more. Gasoline rose 30 to 50%. Hotel rates rose 37%. Airfares rose 31%. Now under our leadership, they’re all coming down and coming down fast. Democrat politicians also sent the cost of groceries soaring, but we are solving that too. The price of a Thanksgiving turkey was down 33% compared to the Biden last year. The price of eggs is down 82% since March and everything else is falling rapidly.” In addition, President Trump claimed wages were outpacing inflation for the first time in several years, noting that “Under Biden, real wages plummeted by $3,000. Under Trump, the factory worker is seeing a wage increase of $1,300. For construction workers, it’s $1800. For miners, we’re bringing back clean, beautiful coal. It’s $3,300. And for the first time in years, wages are rising much faster than inflation. Remember that the wages, just look at it, wages are going up much faster than inflation. How big is that?”
At the same time, he was astute enough to acknowledge there was more work to be done, claiming “And it’s not done yet, but boy are we making progress” while pointing to initiatives that have already been put in place yet have not fully come to fruition. This includes key tax cut provisions in the Big Beautiful Bill signed into law on the Fourth of July, such as no taxes on tips, overtime, social security, and the increased SALT deduction, which “you will see in your wallets and bank accounts in the new year,” “Under these cuts, many families will be saving between $11,000 and $20,000 a year, and next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time.” He also touted the new Most Favored Nation policy for prescription drugs, “There has never been anything like this in the history of our country. Drugs have only gone up, but now they’ll be going down by numbers never conceived possible. It’s called Most Favored Nation. And no president has ever had the courage or ability to get this done until now. The first of these unprecedented price reductions will be available starting in January through a new website, trumprx.gov,” overall investments in the economy, which he pegged at $18 trillion yet are likely closer to $10 trillion, promising “jobs, wage increases, growth, factory openings, and far greater national security,” reductions in energy prices, “For years, the radical left Democrats exploited the green energy scam as an excuse to funnel many billions of dollars into their own massive slush funds, as their energy restrictions drastically drove up prices, and they drove them up at record levels. Electricity costs surged 30% to 100% under Biden. And the typical family lost $5,000 to $10,000 in higher energy costs. Think of that $5,000 to $10,000 you lost. On day one, I declared a national energy emergency. Gasoline is now under $2.50 a gallon in much of the country. In some states, it, by the way, just hit $1.99 a gallon. And within the next 12 months we will have opened 1,600 new electrical generating plants, a record, and it’s a record that won’t be beaten by practically, I would say by anybody or certainly not very soon. Prices on electricity and everything else will fall dramatically,” and finally lower interest rates, “The yearly cost of a typical new mortgage increased by $15,000 under Democrat rule. In 11 months. We’ve already gotten that annual cost down by $3000 and it’s coming down a lot lower. Wait until you see the numbers are going to be shocking, and I’ll soon announce our next chairman of the Federal Reserve, someone who believes in lower interest rates by a lot, and mortgage payments will be coming down even further early in the new year, and you will see this in the new year.”
Much to the chagrin of his critics, President Trump used these preliminary successes as a full throated defense of his policies, citing a combination of tariffs, cuts to the government, and cracking down on illegal immigration while directly addressing why he has pursued these policies well past where many would have gone including some on the right, who would normally be his supporters. Despite months of the real-card carrying experts, progressive detractors, and even globalist leaning members of his own party insisting that tariffs were the worst possible policy, sure to crash the economy, he boldly embraced them saying outright, “Much of this success has been accomplished by tariffs, my favorite word, tariffs, which for many decades have been used successfully by other countries against us, but not anymore. Companies know that if they build in America, there are no tariffs, and that’s why they’re coming home to the USA in record numbers. They’re building factories and plants at levels we haven’t seen AI, automobiles. We’re doing what nobody thought was even possible, not even remotely possible. There has never, frankly, been anything like it.” On the impact of government cuts on hiring, he noted “100% of all jobs created since I took office have been in the private sector. Think of that. 100% of all jobs have been in the private sector rather than government, which is the only way to make a country powerful and great. This historic trend will continue.” On immigration’s impact, he claimed “For the first time in 50 years, we are now seeing reverse migration as migrants go back home, leaving more housing and more jobs for Americans. In the year before my election, all net creation of jobs was going to foreign migrants. Since I took office, 100% of all net job creation has gone to American-born citizens. 100%. In the end, government either serves the productive, patriotic, hardworking American citizen, or it serves those who break the laws, cheat the system, and seek power and profit at the expense of our nation.”
While many have commented on the various exaggerations and at times cherry-picked numbers that peppered the speech, no one doubts that he has been extremely effective in implementing these policies. Whatever you would like to believe, the border is secure, the government has been slashed, tariffs have been in place for months, Most Favored Nation status has been achieved with major pharmaceutical brands, and the Big Beautiful Bill is law. That leaves only two questions that matter: Will this combination of policies work and assuming that’s the case, will the American people feel the positive impacts in time to buttress Republican chances in the 2026 midterms? Despite claims by both his supporters and detractors, neither question can be answered accurately at this time. Depending on whether you are a supporter or a detractor, there is evidence that can be spun either way. While the job market has been disturbingly soft for the past year and the unemployment rate has ticked up slightly, the recent numbers have been substantially impacted by a reduction of government workers. For example, the economy lost 105,000 jobs in October according to the headline number, but because 162,000 government workers were laid off, the private sector actually gained 57,000 jobs. In November, the jobs report turned positive, with the 64,000 jobs added overall despite 6,000 more jobs lost in the federal government. It is also true that jobs for native born workers have increased while jobs for foreign born workers have decreased, with native born workers now representing the overwhelming percentage of job gainers. To be sure, the overall growth has been less than stellar with an average of only 35,000 jobs created per month since March (including almost 300,000 lost federal jobs), but the underlying dynamics and the fact that the Federal Reserve has finally begun to cut interest rates, at least suggests that there could be rapid improvement in the near future.
The morning after President Trump’s speech, his administration and the country also received good news on inflation. Despite predictions that tariffs would cause a massive spike, the November rate came in significantly lower than expected, which many experts and media outlets described as “surprising.” Though economists had been expecting a much higher rate of 3.1%, the actual figure came in at 2.7%. As CNBC described it, “Consumer prices rose less than expected in November, giving investors hope that inflationary pressures may be cooling enough for U.S. monetary policy to be eased more than Wall Street anticipates. The consumer price index rose at a 2.7% annualized rate last month, a delayed report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected the CPI to have risen 3.1%. The core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, was also cooler than anticipated, increasing 2.6% over 12 months. It was expected to have risen by 3%.” Perhaps needless to say, no news is good news when Trump is in office and economists, rather than accepting that their predictions have proven false, insisted otherwise. “It’s hard to read too much into the November inflation data. The shutdown clearly had a big impact on data collection,” explained Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, in what seemed an obvious point before descending into economic illiteracy, when she appeared to suggest that a lower rate of inflation, which is the growth in prices, means that prices should suddenly be lower. “Inflation did not suddenly improve a lot between September and November. Anyone who has been to the grocery store or paid a utility bill knows this.” Regardless, the number is a positive sign for the Trump agenda and another positive sign may be coming soon: Despite predictions of a recession earlier this year, most economists are now expecting a sharp acceleration in economic growth, with the Atlanta Fed currently predicting 3.5% growth in the third quarter and overall growth throughout the year at close to 3% despite a slight contraction in the second quarter. If the job market improves as seems quite possible, inflation remains at around this level, interest rates continue to fall, and the GDP continues to grow at around 3.5% in the quarters to come, it will be hard not to claim that we’re in the middle of an actual, bonafide boom.
The clock, however, is ticking. Voters are notoriously impatient, and unless they feel this boom for themselves by Memorial Day 2026, the midterms will be grim for Republicans. In that sense, all we can do is wait, but in another, President Trump has clearly provided a messaging template for Republicans to use to demonstrate their focus on the economy early and often throughout the year. If they are smart, they’ll also take advantage of the approach outlined by conservative commentator Kurt Schlichter on Townhall.com last week: Play smallball with a series of targeted economic bills around things consumers hate such as subscription fees, required tips, dynamic pricing, etc., what he referred to as “affordability hacks.” While Democrats are likely to oppose anything Republicans try to pass, it will keep the focus on how President Trump and Republicans are actively working to address voter’s economic concerns and put the opposition on record as opposing them. Ultimately, whether the economy rebounds in time – assuming it rebounds and in my opinion, it will – is going to be a close thing, but every little bit helps and anyone who tells you they know the future – particularly the experts who have been wrong the entire time – is full of shit.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 