Donald Trump\u2019s words and actions rarely align perfectly. If you watch carefully, what he doesn\u2019t say can be just as telling as what he does.<\/p>\n
\u201cStarting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods,\u201d he told the nation ahead of his re-election. The US president declared<\/a> on 2 April would \u201cforever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn\u201d, only to pause tariffs a week later.<\/p>\n He promised peace in Ukraine on day one of his presidency, only to later clarify<\/a> this was \u201csaid in jest\u201d; and has claimed very few people can beat him at golf, only for footage from Scotland<\/a> to raise questions over just how honest that round might be.<\/p>\n As a real estate mogul, reality TV star and political campaigner, Trump learned to bend narrative to his will, even if it meant straying from reality.<\/p>\n As president, this often leaves a gap between what he says and what he does. In many cases, the administration\u2019s actions are more important to follow than the firehose of words.<\/p>\n If you were, say, a US business buying coffee from Brazil, you might have rushed to import it last week after Trump insisted 1 August was the cast-iron deadline for new tariffs. \u201cIt stands strong, and will not be extended,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on Wednesday \u2013 hours before signing an executive order that said new steep tariffs on the country would come into force on 8 August, after all.<\/p>\n And if you\u2019re a US consumer, you might reasonably ask how inflation can be \u201cdead\u201d, as the White House has claimed, if you\u2019re still shelling out more on groceries each month.<\/p>\n The president has an awful lot to say about tariffs. They will, he argues, raise \u201ctrillions\u201d of dollars for the US federal government; eliminate trade deficits with other countries; and even punish Brazil<\/a> for putting his ally, the former president Jair Bolsonaro, on trial for allegedly seeking to seize power after losing the 2022 presidential election. The list goes on.<\/p>\n But what about what the president doesn\u2019t say?<\/p>\n Trump was re-elected last November after repeatedly pledging to rapidly bring down prices for Americans. This assurance formed a central pillar of his election campaign \u2013 a regular refrain in rallies, interviews and debates \u2013 as millions found it harder to make ends meet after years of inflation.<\/p>\n Every policy comes at a cost. Every tax must be paid by someone, somewhere. For consumers, The Budget Lab at Yale estimates the short-term price impact of Trump\u2019s tariff changes is equivalent to an average per household income loss of $2,400.<\/p>\n What Trump doesn\u2019t really talk about the impact of his aggressive tariff agenda on US is prices. One of the few times he has acknowledged it might actually exacerbate inflation led to a bizarre tangent<\/a> about dolls back in May. Acknowledging that tariffs might cause price rises, Trump suggested American children might have to settle for having \u201ctwo dolls instead of 30 dolls\u201d.<\/p>\n Back then, Joe Biden was still to blame<\/a> for any signs of strife in the economy, according to Trump. Now, he argues almost daily Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell<\/a> is responsible.<\/p>\n The biggest indication yet that the US economy is creaking on Trump\u2019s watch came on Friday, when official data revealed the labor market had stalled this summer. He unceremoniously fired the veteran official<\/a> in charge of the statistics \u2013 and alleged, without evidence, that the numbers had been rigged.<\/p>\n With higher US tariffs now in place on a string of countries, the president and his administration will inevitably say a lot about the benefits of his economic strategy. They are already trying to stifle evidence of drawbacks. They might even raise the prospect of a handout<\/a> \u2013 pitched as a sign of this policy\u2019s success, rather than a concession that many Americans are still hard up.<\/p>\n But if you\u2019re running a small business reliant on trade, or walking into the grocery store on a budget, reality supersedes rhetoric. Words don\u2019t pay the bills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump\u2019s words and actions rarely align perfectly. If you watch carefully, what he doesn\u2019t say can be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-319602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114975753091730172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}