OPINION:
Just a few weeks ago, President Trump said, “Grocery prices are starting to go rapidly down.”
Now it’s clear he hasn’t been to a grocery in the past few … well, maybe ever. He has no clue that the price of coffee has jumped nearly 20%, ground beef is up 15.5% and fresh fruit and vegetables are up more than 11%. In fact, grocery prices are sitting nearly 26% higher than they were five years ago.
Welcome to the economy of 2026. It turns out that “greatness” comes with a surcharge.
As we wade through the debris of the past year, a distinct picture is forming. It is a picture of unintended consequences, broken promises and a geopolitical landscape that has shifted beneath our feet. The irony, thick enough to cut with a steak knife, is that the “America First” doctrine seems to be putting America last in almost every metric that matters.
Nowhere is this more glaring than on the global stage. A year into Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, the verdict from the international community is in, and it’s scathing. A massive 21-country survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations suggests that the Make America Great Again approach is, in practice, making China great again.
The survey found that allies are drifting away, with Europeans increasingly viewing the United States not as a partner but as a rival. Meanwhile, China’s influence is viewed as ascendant in almost every territory surveyed.
By turning inward and antagonizing traditional partners, we haven’t isolated our enemies; we’ve isolated ourselves. We’ve vacated the driver’s seat of the global order, and Beijing has happily taken the wheel.
We were promised that tariffs would be a tax on foreign powers, a way to extract wealth from our competitors. The reality, however, is a simple math problem that the administration refuses to solve correctly. New research from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy analyzed $4 trillion of shipments and found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the tariff burden.
Who paid the other 96%? You did. The study concludes that rather than a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans.
The economic fallout has bled into the currency markets. The greenback, once the bedrock of global finance, is eroding. The dollar recently dropped to its lowest point in four years, sliding 10% over the past year alone. Traders were hoping for a quiet year, but the administration’s erratic policy decisions shattered that complacency.
A weaker dollar means our purchasing power is shrinking just as we need to buy imports that are already taxed by tariffs. It’s a pincer movement on the American wallet. And for those on the margins, the squeeze is becoming unbearable.
It gets worse. The housing market is flashing red warning signs. Foreclosures rose 14% from a year earlier, with more than 367,000 properties facing filings in 2025. Bankruptcy filings are up 12%. The safety net is fraying.
And what of the jobs? Specifically, the manufacturing renaissance we were promised? In the spring, the president introduced historic tariffs and declared, “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.”
They haven’t. Since the president declared “Liberation Day” in April, manufacturing employment has declined every single month. Today, U.S. factories employ 72,000 fewer people than they did when that promise was made in the Rose Garden.
The trade war didn’t bring back the factories; it just made the raw materials more expensive for the factories that were already here.
The American people are noticing. The polling data paints a portrait of buyer’s remorse. According to a CBS poll, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans say the president’s policies made them financially better off in 2025 — a stark drop from the optimism held just before the inauguration. A Gallup poll echoes this, showing that 68% of Americans believe economic conditions are getting worse.
However, in this landscape of shrinking margins and rising costs, there is one notable exception. One entity seems to be navigating this economy with spectacular success.
A review by the editorial board indicates that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to generate at least $1.4 billion. While 74% of the country is dissatisfied with the way things are going and families struggle to cover their grocery prices, the architect of this economy has found a way to make the numbers work — for himself.
Don’t worry. It’ll all be over soon. Mr. Trump is out of office in 2029 — or you’ll die because you can’t afford health care. Either way, problem solved.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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