|
A note from one of our paid subscribers: "Journalism and analysis matters more than ever. I don't always trust what I read in mainstream media, but I trust the team at TBP. You deserve to be supported for your work, and good work doesn't come for free. Thank you for what you do. It matters." If you appreciate what you read here today, consider becoming a paid supporter of our efforts!
Backfire
On every major policy question, the Trump regime is failing badly. And voters are taking note.
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
As 2025 draws to a close, it’s useful to step back and holistically assess the first year of Trump’s second term. This is one of the reasons I enjoy writing for The Big Picture; we can disentangle from the headlines and Trump’s distractions to take in a larger view, drawing connections among otherwise confusing and chaotic policies.
Trump’s physical and mental capacity is in notable decline. So, as Jamelle Bouie wrote yesterday in The New York Times, we have in place of a powerful “unitary executive” something more like a kingdom divided into fiefdoms, with a mad monarch at its center. The result is as striking as it is dangerous: a power vacuum where zealots and ideologues, white supremacists and Christian nationalists, tech billionaires and conspiracy theorists, have all stepped in to seize what they can, advancing their own projects and interests as quickly as they can.
That’s the garbage in. The garbage out is what we wrestle with daily. It is no surprise to those paying attention that we now face high inflation and unemployment, soaring healthcare costs, racial terrorism in our communities, a looming war in our hemisphere, and a paralyzed Congress. These are the direct and inevitable consequences of the regime’s own policies. Add to that a president so out of touch and corrupt that we have lost all capacity to faithfully report it, and you have described 2025 America.
Despair over what has been done to us lurks at every turn. But so, too, and stronger, has been our resolve. The U.S. electorate, powered by enthusiastic Democrats, disillusioned independents and even regretful Republicans, has pushed back. Faced with the regime’s failed policies, some championed by the mad king himself, others by his ambitious cronies, the People have begun to speak through their votes. We’ve seen it in the irrefutable numbers in repeated disastrous electoral outcomes for the president’s party. That in turn has caused GOP officials, who are always looking out for themselves, to rethink the cost of blind loyalty. They are beginning to head for the doors—or even, as we saw yesterday on the ACA subsidies extension discharge petition, across the aisle.
The president’s poll numbers are recording this collapse. But we often speak so broadly about the root causes (the economy, immigration, healthcare, foreign policy) that we miss something vital. The Trump regime’s policies are backfiring. That is to say, they are not only failing, they are affirmatively causing millions to reject and condemn what they once supported. That is because they are delivering the very opposite of what Trump once promised.
To better assess this, let’s climb aboard a metaphorical helicopter to buzz sweep the current political landscape, which now looks as sad and ruined as the East Wing of the White House.
The economic backfire
Trump promised his voters that he would lower prices on Day One. What they got instead were tariffs, first against our closest trading partners, then culminating in worldwide “Liberation Day” tariffs in April.
As Susie Wiles candidly told Vanity Fair, many tried to dissuade him from this path, but he wouldn’t be moved off of it. As The New York Times noted,
She said she had tried to get him to hold off announcing the hefty tariffs in the spring because of a “huge disagreement” on his team, but he went ahead and did that too.
It took some time for the true cost of the tariffs to hit. That’s because many big retailers, sensing more tariff uncertainty ahead, stocked up on goods. But now those extra inventories have run out, and tariffs are driving up the cost of anything newly purchased. That means importers need to either absorb the costs or pass them on to consumers. One hurts profits; the other drives inflation.
Farmers, who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, have found themselves unable to sell much of their crops, including soybeans, which the Chinese used to buy in huge quantities.
 |
In place of these sales, Trump has offered farmers $12 billion in new farm subsidies, a kind of socialized solution to a problem that the White House created for itself. But this is little more than an economic bandaid on a far larger wound.
Grocery prices have also soared, in part because of the tariffs, but also because the regime’s draconian immigration crackdowns have driven away many farmworkers, causing production prices to rise. And the cost of beef is now so high that even Fox News has been running stories on it.
