When Ron Daley goes out to eat, he’s shocked by the prices on the menu.
“Breakfast is $20 no matter how you slice it,” said Daley, 63, who voted for President Donald Trump in November 2024.
Daley, who lives in the Denver area and works for a human resources outsourcing solutions company, believes the “tariff context” has created uncertainty in the market and driven up some costs.
But he has also seen other price declines. He recently paid just $1.74 a gallon for gas. Overall, he rates Trump an 8 out of 10 on his handling of the cost of living.
“The president doesn’t have a magic wand,” said Daley, who believes the president’s tariffs and deregulation policies will ultimately reduce most everyday costs.
As both parties prepare for next year’s midterm congressional elections, affordability is top of mind for voters, with Republicans in particular concerned that continued high prices could hurt their chances of retaining control of Congress.
Trump, who campaigned last year on a promise to curb inflation, has in recent weeks repeatedly dismissed affordability as a hoax, blamed it on President Joe Biden and promised that his economic policies would benefit Americans next year.
In interviews, 20 Trump supporters from around the country with whom Reuters has spoken monthly since February revealed how the high costs are impacting their lives and where responsibility lies. Reuters asked voters to rate the Trump administration’s approach to affordability on a scale of 1 to 10. Six out of 20 voters gave it a score of 5 or less, and only one gave it an 8 or more.
But a majority of voters firmly supported the president, predicting his policies will increase purchasing power in the long run and saying he has little control over everyday living costs. Most of them argued that larger structural problems in the U.S. economy, such as oligopoly, corporate greed, and an excessive money supply, were responsible for the rising cost of living.
Breeding anxiety
Their views are broadly consistent with recent opinion polls. Nearly three-quarters of Trump voters polled by Reuters and Ipsos in early December said they supported the president’s actions on cost of living, compared to just 30% of all respondents. The number of Trump supporters was up 10 points from a smaller November poll.
Still, Republicans are concerned about economic vulnerability ahead of next year’s election, and independents are more skeptical of the president’s economic policies. Trump has gone out this week touting cost-cutting efforts to audiences, starting with a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
“There is no higher priority than making America affordable again,” Trump said at the rally, taking credit for lowering the cost of gas, energy and eggs. Almost a year after President Trump took office, he blamed Biden for the soaring prices of other goods.
Job growth has slowed during President Trump’s second term, the unemployment rate has risen to a four-year high and consumer prices remain high, government statistics show. Overall, economic growth has rebounded slightly after contracting in the first months of the year.
Eight of the voters interviewed by Reuters reported that prices at local restaurants and grocery stores, especially meat and coffee, had increased, but some stores reported food prices had fallen, and 11 said they had felt a decline in local gas prices.
Some complained that Trump had done too little to address these issues and that Trump’s signature tariffs were inadvertently introduced, needlessly raising prices for Americans.
Loretta Torres, a 38-year-old mother of three from suburban Houston, gave Trump an 8, but said this year’s holiday shopping season was difficult because tariffs doubled or tripled some prices. “I definitely hope that these tariffs will come down and improve over time,” she said.
Gerald Dunn, 67, a martial arts instructor in New York’s Hudson Valley, agreed, rating Trump a 6 for affordability. “We want people to stop imposing tariffs for no reason. It’s bad for the economy because uncertainty creates fear,” Dunn said.
But other voters said they didn’t notice any price increases from the tariffs. Terry Alberta, 64, a pilot from Michigan, noted that U.S. shoppers spent a record amount of money online on Black Friday.
Alberta said it has enough “people are saying it’s hurting, but it clearly hasn’t done any harm” to rein in such spending. “It’s like bashing the administration and saying, ‘Oh, these tariffs are so bad,’ why are we still buying things?”
The upper limit of corporate greed
Regardless of how they rate Mr. Trump, most voters blame private industry and macroeconomic factors for the rising prices of basic goods and services.
Although the 20 voters are not statistically representative of all Trump voters, their age, education, race/ethnicity, location, and voting history closely match those of Trump’s voters as a whole. They were chosen from among 429 respondents in a February 2025 Ipsos poll who voted for Trump in November and said they were willing to talk to reporters.
Don Jernigan, a 75-year-old retiree from Virginia Beach, gave President Trump a “4” in terms of his economic leeway for not doing enough to curb oligopolies.
In industries like meat packaging, “such large companies cover a large portion of the product supply chain,” Jernigan said. “Small businesses are completely regulated out of the system and nothing has happened to change that.”
In Georgia, David Ferguson, 54, said he hoped President Trump would use executive orders to push through legislation that would limit benefits in areas such as health care, and accused dominant corporations of “mad feeding” on higher costs.
Lou Nunez, an 83-year-old retired general who lives in Des Moines, Iowa, also pointed to the fact that his Obamacare health insurance premium payments will double if U.S. lawmakers don’t extend pandemic-era subsidies by the end of the year.
“Certainly if the president wanted to, he could probably get Congress to pass a grant, but I think the president is pretty opposed to it,” said Nunez, who gave Trump a 2 on affordability.
“I don’t think he’s done that much to improve the price of anything,” Nunez added.
“Drill baby, drill.”
A common refrain, especially among voters who rated Trump highly overall, was that the president lacked the authority to immediately cut costs.
Kate Mottl, 62, of suburban Chicago, and Rich Somora, 62, of Charlotte, North Carolina, rated the president an 8 and a 6, respectively, echoing one of Trump’s campaign mottos, “Drill, baby, drill,” and suggesting that opening more U.S. territories to oil and gas extraction would help lower the cost of living.
They also stressed that Trump’s ability to directly lower prices is limited. Mottl said he hopes food and utility prices will go down, but is “very optimistic” about President Trump’s economic leadership. “There’s a lot he can do in his first year or so,” she said.
“A lot of them are policy changes, and a lot of them have to go through Congress,” Somora said.
Will Brown, 20, a student from Madison, Wisconsin, blamed the current inflation on the Biden administration’s federal spending plan, which injected cash into the U.S. money supply.
Brown gave the president a 7 on affordability, saying meat prices are “terrible” and housing costs are out of reach for many Americans.
Correcting inflation and high costs of living is “easier said than done,” Brown said.
How 20 President Trump voters rate Trump’s approach to affordability on a scale of 1 to 10 https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-TRUMP/VOTERS-IMMIGRATION/jnpwkledmpw/chart.png
(Reporting by Julia Hart in New York; Editing by Paul Thomasuk and Claudia Parsons)
