The President’s recent State of the Union address was delivered with his trademark showmanship, acknowledging the accomplishments of various individuals. However, for most Americans, the speech was strikingly short on economic substance. The President’s claim that “America is winning so much that we don’t know what to do about it” may ring true for the upper 1%, but for the 60% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, it feels like a slap in the face. We are currently stuck in a “K-shaped” economy. This occurs when different segments of society prosper at vastly different rates, much like the diverging arms of the letter “K’, rather than the entire nation rising together. While “Trump-speak” often contains small kernels of accuracy, such as “gas prices are down”, these gains are swallowed by the rising costs of healthcare, utilities, and groceries. For the majority, these daily expenses are outpacing income growth. While several factors contribute to this disparity, the vast majority of economists agree that President Trump’s obsession with tariffs is the primary driver behind this lack of affordability. Recently the Supreme Court noted that tariffs act as a regressive tax, yet we have learned through experience that this President rarely admits when his policy is failing. Given this reality, it is clear that the “winning” is not being shared. We must look toward the midterm elections to move Congress out of Republican hands. Re-establishing legislative guardrails is the only way to pivot our economic agenda toward one that prioritizes the many over the few.
Tim Knoster, Lewisburg