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The US government’s authoritarian and vexatious attack on Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, should be seen in the light of America’s affordability crisis, which Donald Trump once dismissed, but is now scrambling to claim as his cause. The cost of living is eroding his support ahead of the congressional midterms. By launching a legal assault on the Fed, Mr Trump is trying to shift blame for borrowing costs.
Yet despite controlling the presidency, Senate and the House, Republicans have passed little beyond a large tax-cutting bill that benefits the rich. They have not legislated on housing supply, childcare, healthcare costs or wages. Indeed most of their actions are worsening affordability, notably deferring action even though millions face a sharp rise in their health insurance bills. Mr Trump’s sudden enthusiasm for credit card caps and housing interventions is pure opportunism.
Affordability is not an abstract talking point; it is increasingly driving US politics. The rise of New York’s Zohran Mamdani – whose victory was built by zeroing in on the cost of living – crystallised a broader shift: voters respond to real help, not rhetorical blame. Clearly, Mr Mamdani offered concrete policies and institutional reform. Democratic leaders are listening. Importantly, Senator Elizabeth Warren is prepared to take on the vested interests in her own party. Republicans have offered gestures, scapegoats and reversals of their own past consumer protections.
Until recently President Trump described the affordability crisis is a “hoax” invented by Democrats. For ordinary Americans, however, it is a rising grocery bill eating into already fragile household finances. Then at the end of November Mr Trump declared he was the “AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT” and he would deliver Republican midterm victories. If this prediction were realised it would be a triumph of spin over substance. Mr Trump’s own policies – tariffs, weaker than expected wage gains and elevated prices – resulted in an estimated 3% hit to median household spending power. Thomas Edsall in the New York Times reckoned the average American household lost about $2,250 in spending power in 2025.
Mr Trump’s economic policies are defined by theatrical announcements that do no more than gesture at confrontation with corporate power. His promise to ban institutional investors from buying more single-family homes briefly rattled markets, yet it remains conspicuously vague – there is no legislation, no enforcement mechanism, no challenge to the tax privileges and regulatory carve-outs that fuel real-estate consolidation. In practice, his administration has done the opposite: settling antitrust cases, throttling funding for consumer protections and giving real-estate tax breaks.
The US president claims to want to smash a system stacked against ordinary people. What he actually does is make small changes that leave powerful interests better protected than before. The latest wheeze over pollution is a case in point. By telling the Environmental Protection Agency to stop counting the health benefits of clean air, his administration makes it easier for polluters to cut costs while voters pay the price in illness, missed work and shorter lives.
Mr Trump is not lifting all boats, only raising tolerance for corruption and pollution that benefit a plutocratic class. He trades in symbolic hostility toward corporate excess while promoting policies that entrench it. That is why affordability remains elusive – and why scapegoats, from the Fed to “Democrats”, must continually be found.
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