3 Things Trump Has Said About Helping the Middle Class Move Up
Written by
Andrew Lisa
Edited by
Amber Barkley
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President Donald Trump earned a second term in part on promises he made to working- and middle-class voters. Now that he’s back in office, he must continue appealing to the finances of everyday Americans if he hopes to retain the political capital he earned in November 2024.
Trump has centered much of his message on middle-class prosperity around a trio of broad topics — energy, inflation and taxes.
Here are three things Trump has said about helping the middle class as a candidate and as a president.
Lowering Gas Prices By Expanding Domestic Energy Production
Gas prices hit a record high during the peak of inflation in June 2022, a fact Trump used against the Biden administration from then through the 2024 election.
In October 2024, at a campaign rally in Detroit, Trump made this promise to the middle class: “I will cut your energy prices in half within 12 months. So listen, I will cut your energy prices in half, 50%, 5-0. Cut them in half within 12 months of taking office.”
However, presidents don’t directly control gas prices — but Trump has vowed to move the needle by expanding domestic energy production.
At the World Economic Forum in January, just days after his inauguration, Trump declared a “national energy emergency to unlock the liquid gold under our feet and pave the way for rapid approvals of new energy infrastructure.”
The president continued, “The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we’re going to use it.”
Reducing Taxes for Working Families
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the signature achievement of Trump’s first term in office. Analysts continue to debate which socioeconomic class the legislation benefited the most, but Trump has vowed to push for new tax cuts specifically for working families and retirees in his second term.
At the same Detroit rally, he said, “I will massively cut taxes for workers and small businesses, and we will also have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security benefits for our seniors.”
Fighting Inflation and Lowering Prices
Few crises have hit the middle class harder in recent years than the era of post-COVID 19 pandemic inflation — a fact on which Trump largely banked his candidacy.
While the president has been vague on policy specifics, he has vowed to focus on inflation as a chief priority — especially now that rising prices are again causing unease among working families, AP News reported.
In a primetime address to Congress on March 4, Trump laid the blame on the prior administration in saying, “As president, I’m fighting every day to reverse this damage and make America affordable again.”
Soaring prices for one grocery staple, in particular, have come to define this renewed bout of financial anxiety.
Trump continued, “[Former President] Joe Biden especially let the prices of eggs get out of control. The egg price is out of control, and we’re working hard to get it down.”
He referred to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who is tasked with mitigating a series of bird flu outbreaks that decimated flocks and created an egg shortage starting in 2022.
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