Trump defends economic record as 63% of Americans see economy worsening
Republican candidates are recalibrating their economic messaging ahead of the November 3 midterm elections as voter concerns about the cost of living clash with President Donald Trump’s emphatic defense of his record. The adjustment, visible in campaigns from Florida to Iowa to Texas, reflects a gap between the president’s claims of historic economic performance and a public that broadly sees conditions as worsening.
For the past two years, Republicans have controlled the levers of power in the nation’s capital — from the White House to both chambers of Congress — placing them on the defensive over economic conditions heading into the election. The midterm outcome will determine the legislative and oversight environment for the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
Trump launched an emphatic defense of his economic record on the campaign trail last week, telling supporters the US has “the best economic numbers of any president in the history of our country.” He blamed the press for failing to publicize the gains and described concerns about affordability as a Democrat-inspired “hoax.”
While some economic indicators — including record stock market indexes and historically low poverty rates — are indeed historic, the overall picture is not nearly as rosy, according to BBC reporting. Inflation remained high at 3.4%, outpacing wage growth. The average cost of gasoline had soared to $4.37 (£3.30) per gallon, and beef prices were at a record high. An AP/NORC poll released last week found 17% of adult Americans approved of the president’s handling of cost-of-living issues, with 26% approving of his handling of the economy overall.
A YouGov survey found 63% of respondents believed the economy is “getting worse.” The same polls suggest that many of Trump’s policies — including tariffs, aggressive immigration enforcement and the ongoing conflict with Iran — are widely unpopular. For Republican-aligned pollster Avery James, the director of communications at Echelon Insights, the takeaway is clear: “We ask our voters their motivation to turn out, and what we find is cost of living, cost of living, cost of living. That’s the top issue.”
That reality has put Republican candidates in a difficult position. They fear that echoing Trump’s sunny economic outlook could cost them in tight races, but breaking visibly with the president carries its own risks. In Florida — a state Trump carried in each of his three elections and that has not had a Democratic governor since 1999 — even loyalists like Congressman Byron Donalds, now running for governor, have been forced to adjust.
Donalds, who stood by Trump through his post-2020 efforts and played a prominent role in his 2024 campaign, is criss-crossing the state on an “affordability tour.” At a Hispanic church in Kissimmee, he told supporters Florida is “the best state in America” before acknowledging that “success has gotten expensive.” He ticked through a list of Florida constituents — retirees, teachers, emergency workers, restaurant staff and local government employees — flagging that they need to be able to “make ends meet.”
In his stump speech, Donalds did not mention Trump at all. He leaned heavily into stories of his own financial hardship during his younger years, of living paycheque to paycheque and waiting tables at the traditional Southern-style restaurant chain Cracker Barrel. When he invited audience questions, there were the usual cultural hot-button topics, like the perceived threat of Sharia law in America, transgender athletes in women’s sports and youth crime in public spaces. But his supporters also wanted to talk about the high cost of housing — insurance, taxes, mortgage rates and homeowner fees — and healthcare worker shortages.
At a separate appearance in Kissimmee last week, Donalds’ running mate Bryan Avila offered his own framing of the Republican record. “For the past 26 years, we have been living in a Florida dream, and a lot of people don’t realise the amount of work that has been done in this state,” Avila said.
The next day, at a campaign event at a Tampa seafood market, Avila — who is running for lieutenant governor on the same ticket as Donalds — took questions on energy prices and data centre construction. “Everything is going up in prices, from food to even books for people going to college,” said John Carroll, who serves on a Florida county housing commission. “It’s a challenge no matter which party is in power, but here in Florida it’s been Republican for so long.”
In Florida’s governor race, the Republican messaging contrasts the “Florida dream” of economic growth that Republicans say they delivered versus what they say is the hardship and depravity of Democratic-run states like Illinois, California and New York, according to BBC reporting. Florida’s population is booming, and many of the new arrivals are conservatives who lived in and grew tired of more liberal states in the north and west. Even this pitch often came with a nod to the current economic difficulties.
Republican candidates in other states have followed similar patterns. Texas Governor Greg Abbott hosted a “rural affordability roundtable” in Texarkana last month, declaring: “We must lower costs for Texans in every corner of our state, and with my affordability agenda we will help make Texas the most affordable state in America.” In Iowa, Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, running for Senate, unveiled her own “affordability agenda” and declared: “Iowans are paying the price for Washington’s failures, and they deserve real relief that actually lowers costs.”
Hinson has also called for Trump to quickly end the conflict with Iran — a position echoed by Republican Senate candidates in Ohio and Michigan. Two of Hinson’s Iowa colleagues in the House went further, voting for a Democratic-backed measure to curtail Trump’s war powers regarding Iran.
The internal tensions have occasionally spilled into public view. Reports circulated recently that Donalds had removed most prominent mentions of Trump from his campaign website, a story Donalds denied but that prompted an angry response from the president on Truth Social. “Another Fake Story is that a very close friend of mine, a man I endorsed very early, Byron Donalds, is taking me off his website and campaign materials,” Trump wrote. “If Florida thought the story that Byron ‘dropped’ me was true, he would lose the election, and that would be a terrible thing because he’s going to be a fantastic governor!”
Donalds did say, however, that when it comes to addressing high prices, Trump shouldn’t be a factor. “That’s not even about President Trump,” he told reporters after the website story broke. “I’m the one asking for the votes for the people of Florida to be their governor.”
Other Republicans have gone further in their criticism. Florida Congresswoman Maria Salazar aired a television spot bluntly stating that Trump’s immigration crackdown had “gone too far.” Trump reposted messages on Truth Social accusing the Cuban-American Salazar of betrayal and calling for her to drop out.
Republican strategist Marc Short, a former chief of staff to Trump’s first-term Vice President Mike Pence, described the challenge facing Republican candidates: “It’s almost disingenuous now to try to create separation. I think for voters it looks opportunistic.” Short said it’s hard not to see Trump’s move as a warning directed at any other Republicans who might consider a public break with him, adding that Trump’s ire is not the only reason Republican candidates should approach the strategy with caution. Short characterized the headwinds facing Republicans as “hurricane force right now.”
For candidates like Salazar, who have stuck with Trump for years, there is little choice but to rise and fall with the president’s fortunes, Short said. Republicans who have built their own brand and identities — like Senator Susan Collins in Maine — can more convincingly draw distinctions between themselves and the president.
The outlook for Republicans remains uncertain. Many polls show battleground congressional and state races in a dead heat, and Democrats’ hopes are buoyed by economic concerns — but a majority of voters still hold a negative view of the Democratic Party as a whole. Republican campaign consultant Alex DeGrasse argued the party’s closing message should be: “If you elect the Democrats, they’ll destroy everything. Democrats had a chance to run the country, and by every objective economic metric, they did a worse job.” He added that “right now in the White House, Republicans aren’t panicking, they’re focusing on executing their strategy.”
According to James, of the Republican-aligned polling firm, the key for conservative candidates is to take subjects on which they are relatively strong — like crime, taxes and immigration — and link them to affordability issues that Americans say they care about most. “Republicans are certainly looking to tell those independents that you might not be happy with everything, but we have delivered on these issues,” he said.
With Republicans pouring money into advertising in battleground states, often outpacing their Democratic opponents by significant margins, there is still the possibility that the situation will improve in the final month of the midterm campaign. That has not stopped the Republican faithful from being nervous about their side’s chances — and what some see as a lack of enthusiasm on the right. “Campaigns are won at the end by momentum,” said Joseph Robinson, an engineer who attended the Avila fish-market event in Tampa. “But the momentum has been slow. It’s not really like, ‘Hey, I’m going to go run out there and vote right now.’”
For now, Trump continues to hit the campaign trail — frequently in reliably Republican states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. At a college football game in Tennessee last month, he was greeted by a crowd of more than 100,000; the next day, at a golf tournament in Illinois, he drew another welcoming crowd. This weekend, he is scheduled to attend another football game, in Alabama.
But his own messaging complicates his party’s strategy. Several times over the past few months, he has insisted that voters imagine his name is “on the ballot,” but at other times he has said he doesn’t care about the midterms and that this isn’t his election to fight. If Republicans struggle, he has said, it is not a reflection on how Americans view him. “A lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you,” Trump told reporters in August. He also framed the gap between his party’s record and public perception as a messaging failure rather than a policy one, telling supporters in Texas last week that “the only thing we’re doing badly at is public relations” and arguing that the underlying record demonstrated success.
BBC North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher, reporting from Florida, wrote that if Republicans are punished at the ballot box in November — whether they run with the president or away from him — Trump will bear the brunt of the consequences in the form of a hostile Congress with legislative and oversight powers for the last two years of his presidency.