There’s a particular type of lie that dominates American political discourse these days. It’s not a factual lie, but a conceptual mistruth: the promise that you can make life more affordable without actually making anything cheaper. Call it affordability theater.
It’s easy to propose ideas that make things feel more affordable without actually making them less expensive. And while both parties traffic in this kind of theater, the GOP— especially under President Donald Trump—has turned it into a governing ethos.
The formula is simple. First, Trump will create an affordability problem through his own policies. Then, instead of fixing the underlying cause, he will propose to paper over the problem with a subsidy, a tax gimmick, or a check.
Tariffs are the most obvious example. Trump returned to office in 2025 in no small part because of voter anger about inflation and the cost of living. And his signature policy move was to tariff nearly everything Americans buy from abroad. Tariffs are taxes that raise prices, and analysis from the Budget Lab at Yale shows the costs of tariffs mostly manifest as higher prices for consumers. How does Trump aim to square this circle? Tariff stimulus checks. After worsening the cost-of-living crisis, Trump and his allies floated the idea of sending rebate checks to offset the pain.
It’s hard to imagine a cleaner example—make life more expensive, then offer to partially compensate you for the pain while taking credit for both moves. But after the check is spent, life is still more expensive than it was before.
