Today’s Anxiety About Affordability Is Still Mainly About The 2021-2024 Inflation

The recent high inflation is still claiming new political victims. Economist/YouGov polling shows 28 percent of Americans now name inflation or prices as their most important issue, almost double the share citing jobs and the economy (the second most pressing). The share of Americans picking inflation has consistently hovered between 20 and 30 percent recently and hit highs of 34 percent in early April. Donald Trump, as the incumbent president presiding over all this, finds his net approval on inflation now deeply underwater.

On the face of it, that discontent might seem unsurprising. The Iran conflict began in late February, and since then there have been worries that headline inflation this year could surge to 4 or 5 percent again, if a sustained oil price shock from a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz rippled through the economy.

But this polling doesn’t look, primarily, like a backlash to the latest oil-price fears or the Iran conflict. The better reading is that Trump is suffering because voters are still angry about the earlier inflation surge and the fact that the price level never came back down.

In a Washington Post piece this week, I began to explain why in more detail:

1) Trump’s political deterioration on inflation began well before the Iran conflict. His net approval on handling inflation/prices fell steadily from his inauguration, from +6 approve-disapprove to a low of -34 late last year. There wasn’t an obvious breakpoint after Liberation Day or other policy announcements. There is a small deterioration after early February (-28) that likely reflects the Iran conflict, but most of the damage had already been done.

2) Trump is now as unpopular on inflation as Biden was at his lowest. Trump’s roughly -35 net approval on inflation now matches Biden’s low from May 2024. But CPI inflation today is about 3.3 percent, nowhere near the 9 percent peak Biden oversaw in June 2022. When the Economist/YouGov began tracking inflation approval in late 2022, CPI was still near 8 percent, yet approval fell as inflation moderated, bottoming out once it became clear that disinflation had stalled above 3 percent and the price level wasn’t coming down. That strongly suggests voters react to the price level rather than contemporary inflation rate, and that fact has endured over Trump’s presidency to date.

3) What they are reacting to is the legacy of the 2021–2025 price surge. The most plausible explanation is that voters are still furious about the higher price level left behind by recent inflation, and they blame Trump for failing to reverse it. This is less about current monthly inflation prints or policies (although on the margin, tariffs, pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates, the Iran war, etc. don’t help) than about the fact that everyday essentials still cost far more than they used to in 2021.

4) Trump helped create this expectation that he would bring prices down. Echelon Insights polling from December 2025 found that 80 percent of 2024 Trump voters expected him to deliver lower prices as president. That’s not surprising; Trump at least once pledged simply, “A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper.” But lower inflation is not the same thing as lower prices, and was never in the President’s gift. In fact, prices are now rising more sharply.

5) That’s fueled disappointment, even among Republicans. In February 2025, Trump’s net approval was +65 among Republicans, -21 among independents, and -70 among Democrats. Now, those numbers have moved to +40, -51, and -95. Independent voters, an important bellwether, swung 30 points negative in just over a year.

6) And Trump’s own 2024 voters have soured too. Among 2024 Trump voters, his net approval on inflation has dropped dramatically from very strong positive territory (+67 in late February 2025, a month into his term) to just +33 today. Harris voters were already overwhelmingly negative, but now even many of Trump’s own supporters are registering disappointment.

7) Voters do not just want inflation to slow—they want prices to fall. The December 2025 Echelon poll found that 74 percent of Americans said only falling prices would convince them that inflation or the cost of living was no longer a problem. Slower inflation, 2 percent inflation, or even flat prices were not enough. As I’ve summarized of the poll before, 40 percent of Americans were even willing to endorse deflation after being told it would likely mean lower money wages. Only 15 percent of Americans thought deflation would be a bad thing.

8) That helps explain why Trump polls worse on inflation than on the economy overall. Trump’s approval for his overall handling of the economy (at -19) is somewhat stronger than his handling of inflation and prices (-35). That shows that, in aggregate, the public considers jobs and wage growth somewhat healthier than their evaluation of the state of inflation.

9) The inflation shock therefore seems to have rewired how Americans think about “inflation.” After a long period of relative price stability, the 2021–2025 surge has apparently made the public far more sensitive to the price level itself. Many Americans now use “inflation” to mean “prices are still too high,” not “prices are still rising rapidly.” Real earnings growth last year didn’t appear to dissipate concerns about affordability either. If real wages keep rising and time passes, history suggests eventually voters surely won’t care about the legacy of 2021-2025 on the price level. But right now they are highly attuned to it given its recency, and want a politician to bring prices down.

10) And that is why politicians end up waging a “war on prices.” The only way of achieving deflation, of course, would be a sharp monetary tightening that would risk recession. No policymaker wants that, nor to cut spending and government borrowing that might reduce long-run inflation risks. In fact, Trump has pushed for looser money and seems comfortable with big deficits. And so that’s why instead we get a “War on Prices.” Faced with anger about the effects of inflation on the price level, politicians of both parties are scrambling around proposing price controls, subsidies and various forms of regulation to try to reduce specific prices of life’s essentials.

Biden suffered politically for the inflation burst. Trump is suffering for not reversing its legacy. Unless politicians stop promising lower prices they cannot deliver, the next incumbent will suffer too. Cooling inflation is not the same as bringing prices down, and voters clearly have little patience for promising lower grocery bills if that outcome never materializes.

To read more on how policymakers could actually respond to Americans’ cost of living demands, see Cato’s Handbook on Affordability.