Opinion | It’s the Inflation: Why the Working Class Wants Trump Back

Anti-Trumpers like me see the presidential election as a reckoning for American democracy. For many Donald Trump supporters, it is a simple matter of dollars and cents.

Late this summer, I left my home in New York City to talk to dozens of working-class people in the South, the Midwest and the West. I had no agenda except to hear what they were saying and try to understand the world from their point of view. I interviewed hairdressers and retired sawmill workers, bakers, truck drivers, laundromat managers, pit barbecue cooks, casino card dealers and even a former professional rodeo rider.

The most common term people used to describe the economy was “horrible.” A close second was, “It sucks.”

I talked to men and women, white people, Black people, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans. They looked different, but they sounded the same. Everyone wanted better material conditions for themselves and their families, and everyone was struggling to obtain them. Some didn’t want to talk about politics. Others felt so ignored by politicians that they have disengaged from the process altogether. Everyone who offered an opinion was for Mr. Trump.

If the nation is a body politic, then working people are the nerve endings that feel its economic spasms most acutely. While some of their reaction is the result of chronic, decades-long conditions, the most noticeable pains have presented themselves in the past few years. The worst inflation and the fastest rise in interest rates since the early 1980s — to well-off people, these are headlines. To working people, they are fundamental challenges to their daily lives. Working people worry much more about payday than they do Jan. 6.

Fair enough: But why turn to a lying, abusive billionaire to help them solve their economic problems? Their explanation is simple. Times were good when Trump was president. Now eggs cost nearly three times what they did four years ago, the rate on a car loan is more than 50 percent higher, and some companies are cutting hours. Mr. Trump, they think, is the candidate to turn things around.

In many ways, those sentiments are not surprising. Commentators from Alexis de Tocqueville to James Carville have noted the centrality of money in American life and politics. After all the rhetoric and all the angst, perhaps this election will turn out to be yet another proof of Mr. Carville’s maxim: When it comes to getting votes, it’s the economy, stupid.

SOUTH BEND, IND.

On his right arm, George Lemley has a welt from a burn he got from grabbing hot brass parts off the conveyor belt at his factory job. On his left, he has small, circular needle marks from trips to the local plasma bank, where he sells his bodily fluids twice a week to supplement his income.

Mr. Lemley gets roughly $140 for two 90-minute sessions; in return, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies get important raw materials. George is 45, single, and his mother lives with him to save money. He began donating, he says, because “everything is outrageously expensive.”

Before his factory job, George worked at his local Kroger, so he is something of an expert on food prices. “I went there today for a pound of hamburger,” he says. “It used to be $2.50 at the most, now the cheapest is $4 when it’s on sale. Generic bread, you used to get it for 99 cents, now it’s $2. You might say that’s only two bucks, but it’s two bucks a week, that’s eight bucks a month.”

As a teenager, George was “a huge fan” of Bill Clinton. But he voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and this fall, he enthusiastically plans to do so again.

“I don’t agree with everything Trump says, but I don’t care what he says,” George explains. “I care about his policies and what happens. The economy was great under Trump.”

On the south side of South Bend, far from the yellow brick buildings and emerald green lawns of the University of Notre Dame, Western Avenue is the usual collection of fast-food restaurants, liquor stores, MoneyGram outlets and dollar stores. Dollar stores are a wonderful window into the lives of working Americans, because nearly everyone who doesn’t have much money uses them.

At one of those stores, Danielle Williams and a colleague are busy ringing up the register, helping customers find items and spelling each other when one goes on break.

“Where do you want me to start?” Ms. Williams says when I ask her about the economy. “The food, the gas — I just think it sucks.”

Ms. Williams is undecided whom to vote for. Reserved and soft-spoken on most issues, she is even more diffident when discussing this one. As a Black woman, she is astonished that she’s even considering Mr. Trump. But she felt much more economically secure from 2016 to 2020. “When Trump was president,” she says, “those were some of the best times we had.”

THE DALLES, ORE.

Liz Guzman, born to Mexican immigrants who came to California to pick grapes and oranges, started a baking business out of her kitchen last year. She sees how inflation puts pressure on her microcosm of the American economy. “When my costs go up, I have to be aggressive with prices to make sure I make a profit,” she said.

Interest rate increases have also affected her. To secure a bigger kitchen, she and her husband decided to buy a new house. This required them to trade a mortgage in the mid-2 percent range for one that runs 6.5 percent — “a big swallow,” she says. Now, every month she must pay $800 more in interest.

Ms. Guzman was thinking about renting a storefront where she could sell her cheesecakes and buñuelos, but now she and her husband think it’s too risky. “We’re staying afloat, put it that way,” Ms. Guzman says. “The situation is kind of OK, but the economy is definitely not OK.”

She remembers her parents speaking favorably of Bill and Hillary Clinton but she was apolitical until last year, when, at her husband’s urging, she registered to vote so they could each pull the lever for Mr. Trump.

“We need to take action,” she recalls her husband saying, and she agrees. “The economy, the bills, the food costs, our taxes, the cost when you’re purchasing a car,” she said. “Something’s got to change.”

“I don’t like the guy personally, but I like him professionally,” she said of Mr. Trump. “He definitely has a finance brain on him.”

LUMBERTON, N.C.

On North Roberts Avenue, a woman entered one of Lumberton’s many pawn shops to make the monthly payment on her charm bracelet.

The economics of a pawnshop transaction are as straightforward as those of a plasma bank. She hocked her jewelry for $200 in cash. In return, every month she must pay $44 in interest, handling and storage fees. That’s an effective 22 percent monthly rate and a 264 percent annual rate. If any of her first three payments, she forfeits the bracelet.

Because people pawn goods when they need money quickly, you might imagine the pawnshop business would be doing well. Austin Revels, the clerk, said the opposite is true. In hard times, more people pawn their belongings — but fewer people have money to come in and buy the goods others have forfeited.

“Everything is messed up completely,” said Mr. Revels, who’s in his late 20s. “The money people used to have to come into the pawnshop or the flea market, they don’t have. The little money people have after they get their gas and groceries, they don’t have that anymore. They see a leaf blower or a weed eater, normally they’d buy it. But not these days.”

I don’t have to ask Mr. Revels whom he is supporting. He is wearing a Trump hat and a Trump wristband. A Glock pistol hangs from his belt.

A SLICE OF THE AMERICAN PIE

Some of what I saw can be explained by economic changes that have occurred over the past few decades. The American pie has grown, but for most of that time it’s been cut up in grossly disproportionate ways. Forget the recent economic turbulence: Over the past 45 years, working people have been sledgehammered as the nation moved from an industrial economy to a postindustrial one. On top comes price increases many voters haven’t experienced in their lifetimes.

Given this, can you blame our compatriots if they respond to a dark and often irrational candidate who also promises to restore not only their incomes but also their pride? I can’t. Artificial intelligence has not yet come for my white-collar job, nor those of most of my colleagues. But if it does, I wonder how bizarre our politics will be 40 years on.

A former journalist, Adam Seessel is a money manager and the author of “Where the Money Is.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.