Trump’s first problem on the economy and health care: admitting he’s got a problem
- - Trump’s first problem on the economy and health care: admitting he’s got a problem
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNNDecember 8, 2025 at 6:00 AM
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Shoppers walk outside a grocery store in Bergenfield, New Jersey, on October 24. - Kena Betancur/Bloomberg/Getty Images
President Donald Trump has a fresh chance this week to act on a priority voters continually say they want fixed — but over which he’s in denial.
The high and rising prices of health care, groceries and housing are a leading impediment to the lives of millions of Americans. But Trump, not unusually for presidents, seems more interested in his own political goals and obsessions.
Americans wracked by economic insecurity can’t wait. Nor can Republican lawmakers, who fear the president’s response — which is largely to blame his predecessor Joe Biden — will doom their reelection chances next year.
“Every bill we bring to the floor should be focused on lowering the cost of living for people who need it most,” Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, one of the most at-risk Republicans in the 2026 midterms, told CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday.”
The Senate is expected to vote as soon as this week on whether to extend expiring subsidies on Affordable Care Act programs as part of last month’s deal to end the government shutdown. If Congress doesn’t act, millions will face a choice between much higher premiums or simply going without coverage.
Trump meanwhile is expected to hold an event in Pennsylvania on making prices more affordable, as his administration faces increasing pressure to demonstrate it understands an issue that was instrumental in his election last year.
The prospects of decisive action this week on either score are low, however.
A plan to address Republican qualms while extending enhanced subsidies without major reforms to Obamacare doesn’t yet exist. And even if the Senate finds a compromise, there’s little appetite among Republicans in Speaker Mike Johnson’s narrow House majority to save a law they’ve always hated.
Trump fumes even at the word “affordability” — regarding it as a Democratic “hoax” — and is wallowing in denial about an economy that he claims has entered a “golden age” but that is making many working- and middle-class Americans feel poorer. And while Trump has taken some steps to try to lower costs — of certain prescription drugs, for example — his wider policies may be making the situation worse.
The administration tacitly admitted as much when it recently cut import duties on coffee, bananas and other staples to ease the pain of consumers.
President Donald Trump waves to supporters during the lighting of the National Christmas Tree in Washington, DC, on December 4, 2025. - Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
“As a nation, we have much to be grateful for this holiday season,” Trump said while lighting the National Christmas Tree last week, proclaiming big wins on the border, national security and ending wars. He also said, “Our economy is thriving, inflation has stopped, our nation is strong, and America is back bigger and better, stronger, better than ever before.” This may be one issue where the president’s talent for branding can’t get him out of a political hole.
A CNN/SSRS poll last month found 61% of Americans said Trump’s policies have “worsened economic conditions in this country.” A recent CBS survey found only 36% approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, a onetime strength.
The contradiction between the president’s claims of success and the lived experience of many Americans raises the question of whether Trump, a billionaire, and his wealthy Cabinet have lost touch with what the country is feeling.
Why the latest Obamacare fight is so crucial
The fight over health care is the most urgent and visible clash in the affordability crisis.
If the enhanced subsidies expire at the end of the year, enrollees will face payments that many can’t afford — doubling from $888 to $1,904 next year on average, according to a new poll from KFF, a nonpartisan health policy group.
The stark politics of this issue for Republicans explain why Democrats picked the subsidies as the trigger for the government shutdown. They failed to achieve their goal, but highlighted the catch-22 of GOP lawmakers who want to kill Obamacare but whose success would hurt millions of their voters who rely on the program.
Some Republicans are pushing to extend the subsidies, to give them time to draw up a more permanent replacement health care plan. Others want reform before agreeing to an extension. But then the question becomes how to help Americans who suddenly find themselves with premiums they can’t afford.
The conundrum was encapsulated by Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“Just to extend three years something that has not been working that was meant to be temporary from the beginning is not a good vote,” Curtis told Dana Bash.
“We need a minimum premium for people, even if it’s a couple of bucks. We know we need a cap on income,” he said. “How do we actually lower the cost, not just of insurance, but of health care? And then what do we do in the interim while we’re waiting to do that?”
Signs for former Obamacare health insurance plans are seen in Columbia, South Carolina, on January 28, 2023. - Shannon Stapleton/Reuters/File
As Curtis implied, the chances of a workable reform to Obamacare in the few days Congress is in session before the holidays seem remote.
Meanwhile, most people have already been forced to make their health care budget decisions for next year. This is why some Republicans say a vote to extend subsidies is the only answer. “If you don’t have a better plan, then get on board with ours,” Fitzpatrick told CNN’s Manu Raju on “Inside Politics Sunday.”
Trump has hardly helped the situation. He has repeatedly failed to lay down a blueprint or to take the complexities of the health insurance market seriously during two presidential terms. He did vaguely suggest that Congress should set up health savings accounts but has put no political muscle behind it. The White House also recently pulled back a plan to extend subsidies amid GOP opposition. Democrats are meanwhile salivating at the prospect of highlighting health care costs in campaign ads they can aim at swing-seat voters next year.
Trump’s efforts to show he shares economic pain often backfire
The president is expected to head to Pennsylvania, a state he won in 2024, this week to show solidarity with voters fed up with high prices. But he seems unlikely to ease his political situation, or the economic well-being of working Americans by talking about it. He is resistant to accepting the issue’s political potency. And in the past, he’s struggled to stick to a script and mocked advisers who suggest he needs to show economic empathy.
“They wanted to do a speech on the economy, so we are doing this as an intellectual speech. You are all intellectuals today,” he told a crowd in North Carolina in 2024.
Trump has always been more of a cheerleader than a feel-your-pain president. Yet his transformation of the Republican Party into a populist movement was rooted in his intimate connection with many White, working-class voters who felt deserted — culturally and economically by Democrats. But Trump doesn’t seem ready to commit to any strategy that accepts his second term is not a roaring triumph.
“Our country is wealthy again and secure again,” he said during a Cabinet meeting last week. “There’s this fake narrative that the Democrats talk about affordability. They just say the word, it doesn’t mean anything to anybody, just say, ‘affordability.’” Trump may have a point here, although next year, newly elected Democratic governors in New Jersey and Virginia must live up to campaign promises to cut prices similar to ones the president made in 2024.
Trump is also correct to say that inflation spiked under Biden. But his claims that he has halted the inflation rate are not true. It recently ticked up to 2.8%, meaning the rate at which prices are going up is still rising. And an administration that takes pains to court corporations and the oligarchs of the tech industry is yet to convince working Americans it cares as much about them.
Trump’s frequent announcements of billions of dollars in investment in the US by foreign companies and states do look good — even if they don’t always live up to his billing. And even if such projects come off, they’ll be a long-term proposition and won’t ease prices quickly. Trump’s pledge to appoint a new Federal Reserve chair who will cut interest rates faster could lower mortgage rates and stimulate the housing market. But it could also unleash a new inflation crisis.
While Trump insists everything is great now, some subordinates, including Vice President JD Vance, who as a potential future GOP presidential candidate must not alienate voters, are more nuanced in recognizing some Americans are hurting. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had a sunny prediction on Sunday. “The economy has been better than we thought,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Lashing out at “embedded inflation” left over from the Biden administration, he said: “I think, next year, we’re going to move on to prosperity.”
But voters have heard blame games and optimism before. Successive elections have failed to deliver tangible change. Affordability is a defining issue, that does exist, no matter what Trump says, and it’s become a curse of incumbents.
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