In January 2026, the national average price of gas fell to about $2.83 a gallon, the lowest in five years. By mid-September, it had risen to $4.33.
President Donald Trump won a second term promising fast relief on the cost of living. “Starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again,” he told a Montana rally in August 2024. Twenty months in, the bills Americans actually pay have moved in several directions at once.
The checkout: Groceries and the inflation number
Trump has said the job is done. “When will I get credit for having created, with No Inflation, perhaps the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country?” he wrote on Truth Social in December 2025.
Inflation has slowed a great deal from its 2022 peak of 9.1%, but it has not disappeared. Consumer prices were 3.4% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with core inflation, which sets aside food and energy, at 2.4%. Groceries rose 2.2% over the year and were close to flat in August.
What has not happened is the outright drop Trump described in an April 2025 interview, when he said groceries and “just about everything” were down.
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The pump: A genuine low, then a climb
The sharpest promise was gasoline. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to get gas “below $2 a gallon” and to cut energy prices in half.
It never reached $2. It did fall to about $2.83 in January, a substantial decline, and he took the credit. Then fighting around the Strait of Hormuz pushed crude toward $90 a barrel, and the national average climbed to $4.33 by mid-September, according to AAA, more than a dollar above a year earlier.
Homeowners felt it beyond the pump. Over the year through August, gasoline was up 27.4%, fuel oil 52%, electricity 3.8% and natural gas 4.4%. Fuel oil is a sliver of the national Consumer Price Index basket, but that jump lands hard on households that still heat with oil, many of them in the Northeast. Gasoline alone accounted for more than a third of the month’s rise in the overall index.
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The tariffs: Who actually pays them
Trump describes his tariffs as a foreign tax. “The tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax,” he said in his February State of the Union.
The mechanics work the other way. U.S. importers, not foreign governments, pay the duty to U.S. Customs at the border. Who ultimately bears the cost is more complicated: An importer can absorb some of it, press suppliers for lower prices or pass it on to customers.
The revenue is real. Customs duties brought in $195 billion in the budget year that ended in September 2025, up from $77 billion the year before, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. That is about 4% of federal revenue, well short of replacing the income tax or denting a deficit that ran about $1.8 trillion.
The tax cuts: Who actually gained
Trump calls the law he signed in July 2025 “the largest tax cuts in American history.” The Tax Foundation, which favors lower taxes, ranks it the sixth-largest since 1940 as a share of the economy. Large, but not the largest.
The bigger question is who it helped. The cuts tilt toward the top: About 60% of the benefit flows to the highest-earning 20% of households, according to the Tax Policy Center.
A middle-income household can expect roughly $1,800 in 2026 tax savings. A household making $460,000 to $1.1 million saves about $21,000. Most middle earners gain something, but far less than the headline suggests.
Paychecks, meanwhile, have stayed a step ahead of prices. Median weekly earnings for full-time workers rose 4.6% over the year through June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, against 3.9% inflation over the same span, a modest real gain.
Hiring has cooled, though. Employers added 162,000 jobs in August and unemployment held at 4.1%, a strong month against the prior year’s average of just 31,000, but a far slower pace than 2024, when more than 2 million jobs were added.
The next two years
It is easy to cherry-pick quotes and criticize Trump and his policies. But while his promises have proved not to be as far-reaching or consequential as he claimed would be the case, they have not tanked the U.S. economy.
After a politically action-packed first half-term, anything could happen in the next two years. The question is less whether America can ride it out than whether you are positioned to weather whatever comes.
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