If Trump Is a Political Superman, This Is His Kryptonite

Inflation could end up undermining his agenda, just as it did to President Biden.

To his admirers and supporters, President Trump is something of a political Superman, not only for what they see as his miraculous feats but also for his seeming imperviousness to injury, even those wounds caused by his own words and deeds. He survives or even prospers from things that would kill any mere mortal politician.

But even the Superman on television during my childhood had one vulnerability: the fictitious mineral known as Kryptonite, which would rob him of his powers. Trump’s Kryptonite is a familiar political foe by now: inflation.

More than the border or the chaos of the Afghanistan pullout, it was the spike in inflation in 2021 and 2022 after the American Rescue Act funds hit bank accounts that cost Democrats the presidency.Demand surged, supply-chain problems worsened, and of course the Fed responded by hiking interest rates, which made everything from car loans to home-equity lines more expensive. It all added up to a cumulative 20 percent surge in the cost of living.

The misplaced expectation among Trump’s supporters that he will bring down prices (a virtual impossibility in the absence of a depression) is politically problematic by itself. The greater downside risk, however, is that prices could rise even further thanks to Trump’s widespread use of tariffs. It’s unlikely that such a scenario could cost Republicans the Senate, but it could mean greater losses in the House, which would render Trump the lamest of ducks in 2027 and 2028.

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Conference Board will release its Consumer Confidence Index, a monthly thermometer measuring how people feel about the state and direction of the economy, their buying plans, and most importantly, inflation expectations. Those expectations, which rose in their January survey, are important not because the public has suddenly developed an expertise in economic forecasting, but when higher inflation is widely anticipated, businesses are more likely to raise prices in anticipation of their own costs going up, unions are even more aggressive in seeking better contract terms, and workers become more insistent in seeking pay increases—all important factors in pushing inflation rates higher.

Unfortunately, the Conference Board does not report by party affiliation. But the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment does, which allows a more focused look at independents , the only free agents in our political process.

Over the last 20 years, partisans on both sides have allowed their political preferences to spill over into how they perceive the economy. Democrats tend to be optimistic when one of their own is occupying the White House, while Republicans are pessimistic. When a Republican is elected president, those attitudes miraculously flip. Focusing on how independents see the economy filters out the partisan noise, enabling a more useful analysis of the data.

Later in the week, on Friday at 8:30 a.m., the Bureau of Economic Analysis will release its new Personal Consumption Expenditures report, the inflation gauge that the Federal Reserve Board reportedly weighs more heavily than the more widely known Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Again here, pay attention to consumers’ inflation expectations.

A resurgence of inflation and greater economic anxiety is more likely to diminish outrage among the Trump faithful over the use of personal pronouns on federal forms, DEI efforts in government and the private sector, and the fewer than 10 of 530,000 NCAA student athletes who are transgender. The saliency of renaming the Gulf of Mexico, buying Greenland, and annexing Canada would seem a bit ridiculous when grocery prices and interest rates are rising.

In fact, one reason why the 20 percent increase in cost of living under then-President Biden spurred such voter anger is that his administration seemed to have a thousand proposals to do everything under the sun at a time when the public was only centered on two issues: the cost of living and the border. The more a president is seen doing extraneous things, the greater the frustration and anger over what isn’t being effectively addressed.

So far, Trump’s job-approval ratings are within the same broad range of his first-term numbers. He’s on the higher end of that scale, with some signs of a slight dip in February. It is doubtful that his approval numbers in a second term will drop below those of his first, but equally unlikely that his peaks will go much higher.

In the coming months, it will be the “I’s” that are important—inflation, interest rates, and independents.

This article was originally published for the National Journal on Feb. 24, 2025.