Adding to Donald Trump’s problems that already include the Jeffrey Epstein files, his inability to end the Russia-Ukraine war after promising to do so immediately after taking office, he is now confronted with the same harsh economic news that dogged President Joe Biden.
According to a report from David Lynch of the Washington Post, the president has about 14 months to course-correct the economy or face the prospect that the Republican party will get blown out in the 2026 midterms if he doesn’t get prices down and employment up.
As Lynch wrote, “Consumer prices rose 2.9 percent over the past year, the fastest annual pace since January. Shopping for groceries, in particular, is becoming a traumatic experience,” before adding, “The combination of price pressures and employment worries is reminiscent of the double-whammy that kneecapped Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid last fall and threatens Republican hopes of retaining control of Congress in the 2026 elections.”
Should Republicans lose majority control of one or both of the House and the Senate, Trump will find himself handcuffed as a lame duck president for the last two years he is in the Oval Office, which has the White House concerned.
Despite the Trump White House claims that Biden’s economy was a “disaster” for workers, Lynch wrote, “what the new [job] numbers actually showed, economists said, was that the labor market last year was starting to downshift to a level where fewer new jobs were needed each month to prevent the unemployment rate from rising — a development that has intensified under Trump.”
According to former Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein, “The problem with this affordability crisis is that every incumbent gets blamed for it, and not just here, but in lots of other countries as well.”
He then dryly added, “And that’s Trump’s problem now.”
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