Ronald Brownstein, Columnist

Trump’s Economic Message Sounds a Lot Like Biden’s

It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.

May 7, 2025 at 5:30 AM EDT

Ronald Brownstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a CNN analyst and previously worked for The Atlantic, The National Journal and the Los Angeles Times. He has won multiple professional awards and is the author or editor of seven books.

More worried about manufacturing jobs than high prices.
Photographer: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg

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President Donald Trump has twisted himself into peddling the same argument about the economy as his predecessor. And like Joe Biden, Trump is learning a hard political truth: When Americans are concerned about their cost of living, the promise of more jobs is not an antidote to the reality of higher prices.

Polls consistently show that far more Americans cite inflation than jobs as their principal economic concern. But when talking about the economy, Trump prioritizes the private investment in domestic manufacturing that he says his tariff agenda has unleashed. The White House last week unveiled a website tracking what it calls the “Trump effect,” a running (if inflated) tally of investments announced since January.