In exit polls in the elections that last week gave victory to the Democrats, voters said their decision was due to their disgust with Trump and their concern about the increase in the cost of living.
Evidently, Trump knows and recognizes this. There is no other way to explain the barrage of statements in which last week he denied what everyone knows: that Americans are paying more and more for basic necessities: groceries, gasoline, prescription drugs, housing. And from 2026 we will pay even more.
Instead of working to reverse this serious trend, the president has dedicated himself to denying reality.
“All prices have gone down,” he said on November 6 at a cabinet meeting. “Everything is much cheaper,” he said speaking to leaders of Asian countries, and “We are reducing drug prices to levels that no one thought possible, tremendous cuts: 200%, 300%, 500%, 700%.” “Prices have gone down with the Trump administration, a lot,” he declared the next day in a meeting with the Prime Minister of Hungary. And also: “Everyone knows that it is much cheaper with Trump than with sleepy Joe Biden.”
The issue of rising prices is “a lie from the Democrats,” he said in a friendly interview on Fox News in which he indicated that polls showing that Americans are suffering because of the economy are false and that “gasoline will reach $2 very soon” (it is actually $3.07 on average).
He also announced this week some of his ideas: sending Americans $2,000 checks funded by tariffs, investigating meatpackers for conspiring to raise prices, ordering pharmaceutical companies to lower the price of weight-loss drugs and more.
Meanwhile, in September restaurant prices rose annually 3.9%, rents 3.6%, gasoline 4.1%, health care 3.6%. Food rose 3.1%, and in them, eggs 24.4%, beef 9.9%, sugar 4.7%.
But as soon as importers pass on the cost of tariffs to consumers, at the beginning of 2026 imported basic products such as sugar and coffee, from Brazil and Guatemala, will also rise; tomatoes, chili peppers, mangoes, fresh fruits, avocados and beer from Mexico; olive oil from Spain and Italy; clothes and shoes from China, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Fruits, vegetables, dairy products and household appliances from China, Mexico and Canada will increase in general.
Faced with these changes, the economic capacity of workers stagnates. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a federal agency, “from August 2024 to August 2025, real average hourly earnings increased 0.7%.
And minimum wages, which can be determined by states, remain at an absurd federal $7.25 per hour of work in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, North Dakota, and even where they are $16.50 such as in the District of Columbia, Washington, California, Connecticut and New York, they are insufficient.
A real living wage fluctuates around $28 per hour of work. And if the minimum wage had followed inflation it would have been $24 an hour.
All this means that in just one year, Donald Trump has “managed” to worsen the situation of wage earners, the poor and minorities and that starting in 2026 the situation will worsen.
The president’s reaction shows a disconnection from reality, an inability to take responsibility, ignorance when it comes to making plans.
The president’s voice has a unique and decisive resonance in the perception of many millions of Americans. It is necessary, then, to refute, also on this page, his false assertions, so that in the near future Americans have elements of judgment when making decisions.•