The past four years have not been easy for working people. During the cost of living crisis, workers became poorer as prices for basic necessities grew more quickly than our paychecks. According to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve, real income for the typical American household still has not recovered to its level from 2019, before the start of the pandemic. 

While corporations and billionaires were the ones who got rich during Trump 1.0, workers then didn’t have to deal with the price of eggs tripling or high interest rates making homes even less affordable. People remember Trump’s stimulus checks, and while Trump completely botched his response to COVID, resulting in the needless deaths of over a million people, Biden also forced people back to work by taking away paid time off and other popular policies.

Given the sorry state of the US economy under Biden, it should come as no surprise that a majority of Americans said economic issues were their top concern in this month’s presidential election. Trump won in part by touting his own record and vowing to “rescue Americans from crooked Joe Biden’s economic catastrophe.” But working people should not expect things to get better under the new president. 

Tariffs—particularly on imports from China—are the centerpiece of Trump’s plan to revive the US economy and pay for tax cuts when he returns to power in January. But, although Trump implemented significant new tariffs during his first term, economic growth ended up being both far weaker than Trump promised, and mediocre by historical standards. After taking office in 2021, Biden sharply increased Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports, but economic growth remained slow. In short, tariffs are not a magic wand for stimulating the economy, and according to The Economist, Trump’s universal tariff plan is projected to cost the average American family $4000 a year. 

In reality, capitalism is driven by a boom and bust cycle that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can control. This is why inflation-adjusted income for the typical American family fell during the George H. W. Bush administration, George W. Bush’s first term, and Obama’s first term, all three of which coincided with periods of economic crisis. Although Trump’s first term saw a booming stock market and economic growth, his second term could just as easily see a new crash. He might claim that his policies will create a new period of rapid economic expansion, but there is no reason to believe him. 

Trump has also said that he would “end inflation, and make America affordable again.” A lower rate of inflation doesn’t undo the price increases that have already happened, and his policies are likely to drive new increases in working people’s grocery bills. As the world becomes warmer and extreme weather events become more common, it has become more difficult to maintain the global food supply; these issues were a major contributor to the cost of living crisis, and are likely to worsen in the future as climate change continues. Trump’s energy policies, which aim to ramp up fossil fuel production and cut support for renewables, will only exacerbate the problem. 

Finally, consider what Trump has said about taxes. In 2015, he decried the way that wealthy people were able to avoid paying taxes, saying that they were “getting away with murder”. But after the election—despite his promises for a populist overhaul to the tax code—he delivered massive new tax cuts for the rich, while ultimately raising taxes on many workers. Today Trump’s platform pledges “large tax cuts for workers”, but the emptiness of such promises will become clear.