Voters Put Trump In Power To Lower Prices, Now They Want Him To Deliver

Voter anger over inflation helped propel Donald Trump to the White House, and now, a new survey indicates that those voters want him to take action to lower prices.

“Lowering the cost of prescription drugs” was the most popular choice among voters who were asked what Trump’s first priority should be, according to a Morning Consult survey released Tuesday. The survey was taken in the days following Trump’s victory in the Nov. 5 general election.

Lowering prescription drug costs came ahead of “improving America’s infrastructure” and “immigration reform.”

Should Trump take action on drug prices, it wouldn’t be for the first time. Trump made several moves to lower prescription drug costs during his first term in office.

For example, an executive order in 2020 would have required Medicare, the government’s insurance program for older Americans, to pay the same for certain drugs as they cost in foreign countries. A federal court blocked that measure before it could go into effect, and Joe Biden’s administration later withdrew it.

Prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients will likely fall even if Trump takes no action. A law signed by Biden allows Medicare to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. Lower prices negotiated under the 2022 law will go into effect in 2026, though only for 10 specific drugs.

What About Other Prices?

Prescription drug prices aren’t the only inflation voters are looking to Trump to fix.

Consumer prices surged starting in late 2021 as the economy reopened from the pandemic. Although price increases have since simmered down close to pre-pandemic levels, most prices remained well above the average Trump-era level.

According to an economist at Oxford Economics, that reality may have doomed the Democrats in the 2024 election. The Oxford model predicted the Republicans would ride a wave of anger over inflation to victory in the presidential race.

“Democrats were likely destined to lose the 2024 presidential contest, and it would have taken sustained deflation in recent years for Vice President Kamala Harris to have had a shot of winning,” wrote Bernard Yaros, lead U.S. economist at Oxford.

Will Trump Ease Inflation?

Policies that Trump proposed on the campaign trail—including tariffs and mass deportations—risk making inflation worse, not reduce it, in the view of most mainstream economists.

Unfortunately for voters who demand prices to go down widely, that historically only happened during times of economic hardship, such as the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve, tasked by Congress with managing inflation, tries to keep inflation running at 2% a year rather than falling.