The Economy Stupid! Seniors Should be Doubly Grateful to Trump

Trump is giving them the $6,000 deduction AND the cost of living is skyrocketing because of his tariffs which augurs for a nice COLA uptick for 2026.

GOP-MAGA minions are terrified that "it's the economy stupid!" that will unleash a tsunami in the 2026 elections. They are running around trying to assuage fears by, listen to this, enacting Welfare Programs to counter the anger. By throwing money at anyone and anything, they hope to blunt the rising anger among their voters.

Read below how Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has made a proposal to send a $600 rebate check to every American — man, woman and child — to help offset higher costs from tariff, a check that could very well be thicker if tariffs cause unexpected and higher costs to the average American. In other words, GOP mongrels are proposing a welfare program and economic assistance because of Trump's policies. $600 per person would amount to (600 x 342 million) or $205 billion that would contribute further to the Trump deficit which he claims he is fighting.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) warned colleagues in April that the enactment of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley act, which raised tariffs substantially, led to the defeat of the Republican authors of the legislation in the 1932 election, and lost Republicans control of Congress for decades. Excellent precedent for 2026!

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High costs after tariffs pose threat to Trump and GOP
Alexander Bolton
Mon, August 11, 2025



The cost of living in America is projected to rise because of President Trump’s latest round of tariffs and that’s a political problem for the president and Republican lawmakers in Washington, who campaigned in 2024 on bringing down the cost of groceries and other staples, a message that resonated strongly with voters.

More than six months into Trump’s second term, however, the costs of groceries, and other essential goods, such as cars, have continued to rise, corresponding with a drop in Trump’s job approval rating and a souring public view of Trump’s handling of the economy.

The cost of even “cheap” eats has become fodder for debate on social media, as people grumble about everything from the price of McDonald’s hash browns to Coca-Cola.

The price of eggs has come down in recent months, but a dozen are still, on average, 64 cents more expensive than a year ago, while the price of chicken, ground beef and orange juice were more expensive last month compared to a year ago.

While inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index has stabilized at 2.7 percent, policymakers fear the prices of goods and services could spike up again, which is a big reason the Federal Reserve is hesitant to cut interest rates, a major point of tension between Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Trump.

Trump’s tariffs are expected to put upward pressure on costs. Experts project that higher fees on goods from Canada, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other major trading partners could cost the average family of four an additional $2,400 or more in annual expenses.

A Republican strategist who requested anonymity said Republicans need to be careful that inflation and costs don’t become an anchor on their candidates in next year’s election.

“That’s why Trump’s beating that Fed rate cut like a dead horse,” the strategist quipped, referring to the immense pressure the president has put on the Fed to cut rates.

The strategist explained that while spurring the economy by making money cheaper to borrow might increase inflation over the long term, it will give voters a sense that the economy and their income-earning ability is on the rise.

Vin Weber, a Republican strategist and former member of the House GOP leadership, said while some voters might hope to see prices come down, he warned that is extremely difficult for any president to accomplish.

“I think that we’ve made a mistake as Republicans a little bit, in talking about bringing down costs. Bringing an end to inflation but actually reducing prices is a lot more difficult,” he said.

“We can do that with some things, like certain commodities like gasoline. But broadly speaking, to say we’re going to bring down prices, it’s very, very difficult and not necessarily desirable. In traditional economic terms, prices coming down is deflation and is usually identified with a recession,” he said.

Republican strategists say the “jury is still out” on what the economy will look like a year from now when the battle for control of Congress heats up, but they warn that Republicans’ political fortunes will ride on how voters view their own ability to keep up in a world that gets more expensive every month.

“The two most important reasons why Donald Trump won the presidency in 2024 were to bring down inflation and juice the economy. The progress on those two efforts will go a long way toward determining the president’s job approval and the fortunes of Republicans going forward,” said Whit Ayres, a leading Republican pollster.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of attention paid to the [Jeffrey] Epstein case, but progress on inflation and economic growth will be far more important than the Epstein case to the vast majority of Americans,” he added.

Ayres said that polls show voters increasingly view the economy as Trump’s economy, a perception that took hold after Trump announced sweeping reciprocal tariffs on most countries on April 2, “Liberation Day.”

“Polls show increasingly that the status of the economy is due to policies adopted during the Trump administration rather than those adopted in the Biden administration. That has been the case ever since Liberation Day on April 2 with the tariff announcement,” he said.

A Gallup poll of 1,002 adults nationwide last month found that Trump’s job approval rating has dipped to 37 percent and that his approval rating on the economy has dropped from 41 percent in March to 37 percent last month.

A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll of 1,000 respondents conducted from July 25-30 also found Trump with a 38 percent job approval rating and a 58 percent disapproval rating. Respondents in that poll gave Trump a 37 percent approval rating on “jobs” and a 31 percent approval rating on “tariffs.”

That has Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill feeling nervous about the latest round of tariffs Trump imposed on foreign trading partners last week.

A new analysis by the Yale Budget Lab projects Trump’s tariffs could increase prices by 1.8 percent in the short term and cost the average American household $2,400 a year. The nonpartisan research group calculates that consumers face an average effective tariff rate of 18.6 percent, the highest since 1933.

This has some Republicans in Congress worried about a political backlash.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) late last month unveiled a proposal to send a $600 rebate check to every American — man, woman and child — to help offset higher costs from tariffs. His bill would allow for higher rebates if tariff revenues exceed projections.

A family of four would receive $2,400 in economic assistance under his plan.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) warned colleagues in April that the enactment of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley act, which raised tariffs substantially, led to the defeat of the Republican authors of the legislation in the 1932 election, and lost Republicans control of Congress for decades.

“The economics of tariffs are bad, the politics, if anything, are worse,” he warned at the time.

Congressional Democrats, who are struggling with their own dismal job approval ratings, see the high costs of daily living as an issue that can help them win back control of the Senate and House.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) traveled across upstate New York on Tuesday to highlight how the administration is raising costs and hurting the economy.

Appearing at an event in Niagara Falls, he called Trump’s 35 percent tariff rate on Canada “destructive” and tariffs more generally as “a dagger aimed at the heart of Upstate New York.”

Democrats are hoping to flip several Republican-held seats in New York, and state lawmakers are discussing legislation to allow New York to redraw its congressional lines mid-decade.

A group of Democratic senators from New England sent a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Thursday slamming him over rising energy prices after Trump signed into law the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which drastically cut tax incentives for renewable energy.

“While energy demand surges, your policies are strangling America’s cheapest and quickest-to-deploy sources of energy — solar and wind — by hiking costs, creating insurmountable permitting hurdles and injecting uncertainty into the market,” they wrote.

The signatories included Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Angus King (Maine), an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist and former Senate and House leadership aide, said “voters vote with their wallets and that’s why they voted Trump in.”

But he questioned whether Democrats will have credibility on the issue of the economy and inflation after voters came away from Biden’s four years in office with a strongly negative view of his handling of those issues.

“The Democrats are having a really difficult time seizing on a number of opportunities because they lack the organization and the message,” he said. “They just seem so disorganized.

“We’re 15 months out” from the election and “while historically the Republicans would likely lose the House, it doesn’t feel that way. It feels it could go in any direction,” he added.

“We’ll see what the economy is looking like a few months before the election,” Bonjean said.

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Meanwhile, this is what happens when you put a monkey in charge of your economy. Cheer up MAGA. Your backwardness was doomed anyway.

More than half of industries are already shedding workers, a ‘telling’ sign that’s accompanied past recessions, top economist says
Jason Ma
Sun, August 10, 2025


Jobseekers wait in line to speak to recruiters during a career fair in Chicago last Thursday. (Jim Vondruska—Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi followed up his earlier warning that the economy is on the brink of a recession. On Sunday, he pointed out that the start of a recession is often not clear until after the fact. For now, the jobs data don’t signal a recession yet, but more than half of U.S. industries are already shedding workers.

The U.S. economy isn’t in a recession yet, but the number of industries cutting back on headcount is concerning, and future revisions to jobs data could show employment is already falling, according to Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.

In a series of X posts on Sunday, he followed up his warning from last weekend that the economy is on the brink of a recession.

This time, Zandi pointed out that the start of a recession is often unclear until after the fact, noting that the National Bureau of Economic Research is the official arbiter of when one begins and ends.

According to the NBER, a recession involves “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months.” It also looks at a range of indicators, including personal income, employment, consumer spending, sales, and industrial production.

Zandi said payroll employment data is by far the most important data point, and declines for more than a month consecutively would signal a downturn. While employment hasn’t started falling yet, it’s barely grown since May, he added.

Payrolls expanded by just 73,000 last month, well below forecasts for about 100,000. Meanwhile, May’s tally was revised down from 144,000 to 19,000, and June’s total was slashed from 147,000 to just 14,000, meaning the average gain over the past three months is now only 35,000.

Because recent revisions have been consistently much lower, Zandi said he wouldn’t be surprised if subsequent revisions show that employment is already declining.

“Also telling is that employment is declining in many industries. In the past, if more than half the ≈400 industries in the payroll survey were shedding jobs, we were in a recession,” he added. “In July, over 53% of industries were cutting jobs, and only healthcare was adding meaningfully to payrolls.”

Last week, Zandi said data often sees big revisions when the economy is at an inflection point, like a recession. And on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook similarly noted that large revisions are “typical of turning points” in the economy.

For now, the Atlanta Fed’s GDP tracker points to continued growth, and the third-quarter forecast even edged up to 2.5% from 2.1% last week, though that’s still a slowdown from 3% in the second quarter.

There are also no signs of mass layoffs as weekly jobless claims haven’t spiked, and the unemployment rate has barely changed, bouncing in a tight range between 4% and 4.2% for more than a year.

But Zandi said the jobless rate will be a “particularly poor barometer of recession” as the recent decrease in the number of foreign-born workers has kept the labor force flat.

“Also note that a recession is defined by a persistent decline in jobs — the decline lasts for at least a few months. We aren’t there yet, and we are thus not in recession,” he explained. “Things could still turn around if the economic policies weighing on the economy soon lift. But that looks increasingly unlikely.”

Wall Street is divided on what the jobs data are saying, with some analysts attributing the slowdown to weak labor demand while others blame weak labor supply amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Bank of America falls into the supply camp and said “markets are conflating recession with stagflation.” But UBS warned of weak demand, pointing out the average workweek is below 2019 levels, and said the labor market is showing signs of “stall speed.”

Last week, economists at JPMorgan also sounded the alarm on a potential downturn. They noted that jobs data show hiring in the private sector has cooled to an average of just 52,000 in the last three months, with sectors outside health and education stalling.

Coupled with the lack of any signs that unwanted separations are surging due to immigration policy, this is a strong signal that business demand for labor has cooled, they said.

“We have consistently emphasized that a slide in labor demand of this magnitude is a recession warning signal,” JPMorgan added. “Firms normally maintain hiring gains through growth downshifts they perceive as transitory. In episodes when labor demand slides with a growth downshift, it is often a precursor to retrenchment.”