If the midterms were a referendum on whether trans athletes should be barred from women’s sports, or the White House ballroom should be gorgeously renovated, or God should be identified as “nonbinary,” then Republicans would have a clear and confident closing message.
Unfortunately for the GOP, voters are less concerned with the Christian deity’s preferred pronouns than with their own cost of living. Which is understandable: Diesel fuel prices just hit a record high, mortgage rates are climbing, and groceries keep getting more expensive.
Due partly to these trends, Republicans are poorly positioned to win an argument about inflation — and are only growing more so, as Election Day nears. This was apparent before President Donald Trump convened the first-ever Republican midterm convention in Dallas this week. But the festivities underscored the GOP’s predicament and the many ways that Trump is personally exacerbating it.
Many Republican speakers did address the subject of affordability in Dallas. And the party’s broad narrative is straightforward enough: Democrats created the cost-of-living crisis, Republicans alleviated it by cutting your taxes.
But this is a tough line to sell. Americans might still disdain President Joe Biden’s economic management. Yet they’re far more likely to blame high prices on the current president than the previous one, according to polls.
And not without reason. After all, it was Trump — not Biden — who engineered an oil shock and global trade war. Tellingly, on Wednesday night, all four battleground state Senate candidates — Ken Paxton, Jon Husted, Michael Whatley, and Mike Collins — made no mention of the Iran war or of Trump’s tariffs.
If Republican frontliners are clear-eyed about their party’s liabilities, Trump seems largely indifferent to them. Historically, presidents have often made an effort to limit election-year price increases — and/or, to reduce the salience of their party’s worst issues. Yet Trump has been doing the very opposite.
In recent weeks, the president has escalated his conflict with Iran and his trade war with US allies, driving up Americans’ costs in the process. And he’s been remarkably frank about his refusal to prioritize affordability.
In his remarks to the convention Wednesday, Trump impersonated a disaffected constituent, saying, “You know, I wish you didn’t do the war in Iran. Gasoline’s up, ba ba ba” — before explaining to this critic that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon took precedence over their energy costs.
Republicans may still weather a midterm backlash. The party remains narrowly favored to retain the Senate, while gerrymandered maps should limit its losses in the House. But if this year’s “blue wave” proves less than tidal, it will be in spite of Trump’s efforts, not because of them.
The GOP’s very simple problem
The Republican Party’s fundamental problem is simple: Voters’ top concern is the cost of living — and American purchasing power has fallen sharply in 2026, as a direct result of the president’s policies.
In virtually every poll, a plurality of voters name “inflation,” “the cost of living,” or “affordability” as their most important issue. And they are not impressed with Trump’s record on that front. In a recent Ipsos survey, 74 percent of respondents said that their cost of living is “off on the wrong track.” Meanwhile, in Nate Silver’s poll tracker, more than 70 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation, up from just 41 percent when he took office.
During his first year in office, Trump could have reasonably argued that voters were giving him a bad rap on the economy. After all, real wages — how much Americans earn per hour, adjusted for inflation — actually rose in 2025, even as disapproval of the president’s economic record surged.
But in February 2026, Trump brought nearly three years of real wage growth to a screeching halt: By launching a war with Iran — and thus, triggering its closure of the Strait of Hormuz — Trump triggered the first sustained decline in Americans’ purchasing power since 2022.
According to an estimate from Brown’s Watson School, the Iran war has cost the average US household more than $780 through elevated energy prices.
Politically, this seems to have made a real difference. At the beginning of March, Trump’s net approval rating on inflation was -28, according to Nate Silver’s polling average; as of this writing, it is -45.9.
At this point, there may be little Trump can do to gain broad public trust on the cost of living. But political science research suggests that economic trends in the runup to Election Day can shift votes at the margin. And precisely because this year’s price spike is largely self-inflicted, Trump has an unusual amount of power to increase affordability before Americans head to the polls. All he’d need to do is reach a ceasefire (or, ideally, peace deal) with Iran.
We know Trump could bring down energy costs by pursuing peace because he already has. Throughout 2026, oil prices have consistently fallen whenever the US-Iran war has cooled off — and risen whenever it has intensified.
When Trump signaled an imminent ceasefire deal in early June, the price of an oil barrel swiftly fell, dropping below $75. Once that ceasefire broke down early the next month, oil prices resumed their climb, until Trump paused US strikes on July 25.
Hostilities resumed over the ensuing months. But Tehran appeared to offer Trump a preelection off-ramp on September 1, when Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that his country would be willing to restore June’s memorandum of understanding — a deal that had temporarily eased restrictions on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian regime’s good faith cannot be assumed. And peace negotiations are doubtlessly complex. At the very least, however, Trump had an opportunity to try to reduce fuel prices ahead of November’s elections earlier this month. Embracing a ceasefire would not have prevented the US from resuming attacks after Election Day (Trump is manifestly comfortable with reneging on agreements with Iran). Nevertheless, Trump opted instead to launch a new round of strikes against Iranian military targets and oil tankers, sending crude prices hurtling past $100 a barrel.
Americans have paid a price for Trump’s trade war
The Iran war has been by far the biggest drag on American living standards since Trump took office. But his trade policies certainly haven’t helped.
Back in May, the Dallas Federal Reserve released an analysis of how Trump’s tariffs had impacted consumer prices. In its report, the bank compared America’s core inflation rate to what that rate would have been, if the US charged no tariffs. The two lines diverged sharply after “Liberation Day,” when Trump imposed large tariffs on nearly all of America’s trade partners.
Of course, Trump backed off his most gargantuan Liberation Day tariffs. And in February, the Supreme Court gave Trump a chance to abandon much of his inflationary trade agenda by ruling that the bulk of his tariffs were unconstitutionally enacted. At that point, he could have insisted that his overturned import taxes had been brilliant, but that the courts had left him no choice but to withdraw them (thereby easing price pressures in an election year). Instead, Trump immediately enacted temporary 10 percent across-the-board tariffs with alternative legal authorities. Then, when those were set to expire in late July, he replaced them with nearly identical levies, now legally justified as a means of combatting forced labor abroad.
More recently, Trump escalated commercial tensions with Canada into an all-out trade war. In late August, Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports, declared that Lake Ontario was now “Lake America,” and threatened to extend that levy to Canadian trucks, cars, and auto parts in the new year. Ottawa hit back with up to 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion in US goods. This week, Trump upped the ante again, announcing outright import bans on some Canadian alcohol, dairy, and motorcycle products.
On Wednesday night, Trump signaled that he’s in no rush to reach a compromise with our neighbors to the north, saying that Canada was “dying to make a deal.”
The trade war with Canada is unlikely to have a huge impact on the American economy nationally. But it will be felt in regions heavily integrated with the Canadian economy, including much of Maine, where Republican Sen. Susan Collins is fighting to hold onto her seat.
And the political costs of Trump’s trade actions may be as much optical as economic. When Trump deliberately increases the price of various imported goods by 50 percent, he sends voters a clear message: The GOP’s leader simply does not care very much about lowering the cost of living.
The connection between tariffs and prices is not lost on voters. In a Guardian poll taken earlier this year, seven in 10 Americans said that the Trump’s tariffs had forced them to pay higher prices.
And even Trump understands that his trade agenda is bad for affordability. While he has been enacting new trade restrictions willy-nilly for months, he did pause plans to dramatically raise ground beef tariffs last month, in order to ease meat costs for consumers. Still, Trump has refused to apply the logic of his hamburger policy to broader realms of international commerce.
Crass pandering has its upsides
On one level, Trump’s deprioritization of his party’s short-term political interests might seem noble. As a general matter, we want presidents to put America’s long-term well-being above immediate electoral considerations. If seeking a ceasefire with Tehran would jeopardize American national security — or if allowing imports of Crown Royal whiskey would condemn our grandchildren to Canadian economic tyranny — then it would be bad for Trump to do those things, just to help Susan Collins.
In reality, however, Trump’s war with Iran doesn’t seem to be furthering any of America’s geopolitical goals. Nor has his trade war been a boon to US industry. Whatever Trump is prioritizing over Americans’ purchasing power and Republicans’ midterm odds, it doesn’t seem to be a robust theory of foreign policy or international economics.
To be sure, Trump has not wholly forsworn pandering to voters’ pocketbook concerns. On Wednesday night, the president promised to deliver a $5,000 check to every American adult, if Republicans retain control of Congress in November. But Trump’s audacious giveaway boasts little support on Capitol Hill, in part because high deficits are already putting upward pressure on inflation and interest rates — yet another cost-of-living issue his own policies have exacerbated.
For now, ordinary shoppers are bearing the brunt of Trump’s eccentric and counterproductive priorities. But come November, Republican battleground candidates may also find themselves paying the price.
