The economy is doing great, right?
Bigly. Yuge. No one can credibly argue otherwise since all economic indicators point in the same direction namely America is winning.
There are, however, glaring problems that could become strong economic headwinds if President Trump is blind to underlying inflationary pressures that manifest themselves as a daily reminder to the voter.
The most obvious and powerful leading indicator is shown on just about every street corner every day – the price of gasoline.
Sure the American economy is booming but is the American worker seeing it at the end of the month or are wage gains being wiped out by rising gasoline prices?
The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline on Inauguration Day 2017 was $2.32, today it is $2.88. That’s an increase of .66 a gallon or 24%. Multiply that by a 20 gallon tank on a weekly basis that is $13.20 or $52.80 a month or $686.40 a year.
As we all know that when prices go up that means demand is trending ahead of supply. It’s simply math from market reality, right?
Well, as ESPN College Gameday commentator Lee Corso is famous for saying, “NOT so fast, my friend!”
Politics has a funny way of determining reality.
Prices are up and that has to be caused by economic growth, right?
Well, what if some of Donald Trump’s tariffs are harming the costs of production and increasing the prices of producers? Those cost increases would be passed onto the American worker when we should be developing trade policies to bring down the cost of gasoline not increase it.
We all support free and fair trade, right?
But we also don’t want to have to pay out of our pockets for decisions to make a political point that have not been thought through.
There are far reaching consequences to some of our trade negotiations and if you harm the American worker at the gas pump, I guarantee it will be reflected in the voting booth.
