(Washington) US President Donald Trump is traveling to Pennsylvania on Tuesday hoping to appease the anger of Americans, exasperated by the rising cost of living, one of his major campaign promises and one of the major arguments of his detractors.
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Trump maintains, despite the figures, to have reduced inflation and he now intends to resume the rallies which were successful for him during the last presidential campaign.
The 79-year-old billionaire vehemently rejected what he calls Democrats’ “deception” on the cost of living. But polls indicate that his popularity rating has fallen under the weight of the poor performance of his economic policy.
The Republican also faces dissension within his own “Make America Great Again” movement, with growing calls to focus domestically rather than internationally.
In Pennsylvania, Trump “will discuss how he and his administration continue to focus on achieving his No. 1 priority since the first day of his presidency: ending Joe Biden’s inflation crisis,” a White House official told AFP.
The president is scheduled to speak from the Mount Airy Casino resort in Pocono, Pennsylvania, according to US media reports. Before becoming president, he had several casinos in his business portfolio, several of which went bankrupt.
Donald Trump insists that prices are falling for key products like beef, eggs and coffee, and that he is fixing the “mess” left by his Democratic predecessor.
In the Council of Ministers last week, he also affirmed that the subject of the cost of living was fabricated by the opposition.
“I inherited the worst inflation in history. Nobody could afford anything,” he declared, claiming to have “stopped inflation since January” and to have “almost reached the ideal level”.
But price increases continued to accelerate, reaching 2.8% in September. The president’s popularity rating has simultaneously fallen to its lowest level since his return to power in January, in part because of the cost of living that Americans blame in part on his tariffs.
12 billion for agriculture
His former ally, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a radical right figure who resigned from Congress after breaking with him, accuses him of having failed on the issue.
“For a president whose slogan was “America first,” the No. 1 priority should have been domestic policy and it was not,” lamented Mr.me Greene Sunday on CBS News.
The theme was at the center of the Democrats’ campaign during the elections won in November for mayor of New York and for the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia.
Working-class Pennsylvania is a key state on the road to the White House. Trump narrowly won this northeastern state in 2016 and 2024, and narrowly lost it to Biden in 2020.
He is not eligible to run again in 2028, despite statements to the contrary within his clan. But the midterm elections to renew Congress in November 2026 are as crucial as they are uncertain.
The president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, indicated that he would be on the ground next year, in order to mobilize an electoral base tempted by abstention.
Already, he announced on Monday a $12 billion aid plan to support American farmers, hit hard by the trade war triggered by Washington.
“We love our farmers and as you know, farmers love me,” Trump said at the White House.
