Just days before he is set to raise his right hand and place his left on a Bible to swear an oath to the Constitution, President-elect Donald Trump faces low public confidence in his ability to fulfill one of his top campaign promises: lowering the price of groceries. According to a new Associated Press poll, most Americans, many of whom cast their ballot on that pledge, do not believe he will bring them relief.
“From the day I take the oath of office, we’ll rapidly drive prices down and make America affordable again,” Trump told supporters on the campaign trail in North Carolina, the Washington Post reported. “Prices will come down. You just watch. They’ll come down fast.”
Just weeks before Election Day, Trump promised, “Vote Trump and your incomes will soar. Your net worth will skyrocket. Your energy costs and grocery prices will come tumbling down,” Business Insider reported.
He repeatedly vowed to voters that he would “get the prices down,” “end inflation,” and even “slash your prices.”
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Then, after winning the election largely on that platform, TIME magazine asked Trump, “If the prices of groceries don’t come down, will your presidency be a failure?”
“I don’t think so,” Trump insisted, before seeming to backtrack on one of his top campaign promises. “I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”
Despite having voted for him, in many cases, on his pledge to lower the cost of groceries, voters now appear to have come to believe he will be unable to do that.
“Only about 2 in 10 Americans are ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ confident that Trump will be able to make progress on lowering the cost of groceries, housing or health care this year, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, while about 2 in 10 are ‘moderately’ confident,” the AP reported.
The AP poll finds 61% are slightly or not at all confident in Trump’s ability to lower the cost of food and groceries.
An extensive AP survey “showed that about 4 in 10 voters in the November election identified the economy and jobs as the most important issue facing the country and that about 6 in 10 of those voters cast their ballot for Trump.”
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Those voters who believe Trump will not be able to fulfill his promise to lower prices may be correct.
Just days after the November election, the Associated Press reported, “many economists think Trump’s plans, including putting tariffs on imported foods and deporting undocumented workers, could actually make food prices rise.”
There is one person who appears to be holding Trump to his promise to lower prices, however. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, now his incoming White House Press Secretary.
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt told the AP after the election. “He will deliver.”
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