The economy is President Trump's real strength is the economy and he must hammer that home during tonight's State of the Union address. Constant wins on "kitchen table issues"—a phrase hearkening back to when middle-class working families paid their bills each month by writing checks sitting at the kitchen table— have been the highlight of his first year.
In all the sound and fury that will surround tonight's speech and the coming midterms, what will be most significant to voters who will determine wins and losses will be how the economy is doing, and specifically how each one personally is doing. The vibes aren't vibing real well with people at the moment, which is all the more reason Trump needs to hit it hard tonight.
There is nothing tone-deaf about saying that the dark Biden years dug a deep hole, but we are climbing out of it, and everyone will be feeling it more and more this year.
Every data point shows an economy that has come back to life, not just in the aggregate, not just in the stock market, but in the truest kitchen table issues of household income and expenses.
Employment growth, that is, net new jobs created and filled in the economy, grew in January at twice the rate that economists had been expecting. This came after a sluggish 2025 and suggests that better trade deals and elements of the Big Beautiful Bill are starting to take effect.
And average hourly earnings across all jobs are growing at about 3.7 percent. At the same time, the Consumer Price Index — a.k.a. inflation — has continued to slow from a peak of 9 percent during the dark years of Joe Biden to 2.4 percent in January.
To put a fine point on this, more jobs are being created, and average wages across those jobs are growing significantly faster than the cost of living. It takes Americans a bit to feel it, because the skyrocketing costs under Biden are the baseline. Undoing all that damage will take time.
But there is a key area that just destroyed the cost of living from 2020 to 2024 that has seen a dramatic turnaround.
Under the four years of the Biden administration, the average monthly mortgage payment nearly doubled — not a stat you will find in the legacy propaganda media. But in Trump's first year, mortgage payments on average actually declined.
In just four short, painful years under Biden, mortgage rates soared by nearly $1,300 per month, while during Trump's first year, they decreased by $45 per month. Before you can turn a ship around, you have to stop its direction. Trump stopped it and turned it around in one year.
Similarly, rents are also falling under Trump after historic increases under Biden. According to third-party sources, as the feds don't track rents, rents increased by 23-30 percent during Biden's four years. In Trump's first year, they fell by 0.2-0.5 percent. Not much, but again the ship was stopped and turned.
These changes are the direct result of changing policy direction. De-regulation, re-shoring manufacturing and other processes through better trade deals, deporting millions of illegal aliens taking jobs and driving up housing costs, re-opening domestic oil production, and the icing on the cake: the Big Beautiful Bill's tax cuts that will be showing up in Americans' tax returns in the next few months.
Clinton advisor and Democrat stategist James Carville has been wrong about a lot, but he was right about one thing: "It's the economy, stupid." And the American economy is really beginning to roar back to life across the key data points.
These successes, which are slowly making their way into the victim-shocked American mind following the Biden disaster, must be repeated publicly as the reality of them continues to break through to the kitchen table. And tonight's SOTU address is the perfect launching point.
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children,seven grandchildren, and a rapacious hunger to fight for America on their behalf. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
