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Summary
- Discussions of affordability often ignore crucial data.
- The border, energy, industry, and security all significantly impact the economy.
- Prices do not exist in a vacuum.
One word is echoing in all discussions of the upcoming midterm elections: affordability. When pundits talk about affordability, they almost always start and end with the pump, the grocery store, and the housing market. That framing has two problems.
First, most Americans are busy working, raising children, and paying bills. They do not carry the historical numbers for gas and inflation under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump 1.0, or Joe Biden.
Second, the conversation almost never asks the question voters elect leaders to answer: Can we afford to change course on policy?
The numbers do not support claims of an unprecedented crisis in 2026. Under Bush, the national average for regular gasoline peaked at $4.11 a gallon in the summer of 2008. Under Obama, it reached $3.97. During Trump’s first term, it never hit $3. With Biden, it hit $5.01 in June 2022. So far, the second Trump term’s peak price has been $4.50.
Oil is a global commodity. Wars, recessions, and supply shocks move prices more than any single White House decision. But the record high on the above list still belongs to Biden.
The same pattern appears with inflation. The peak year-over-year rate under Biden was 9.1% in June 2022—a multi-decade high. Under Bush, it reached 5.6% in 2008. During both Obama’s presidency and Trump’s first term, it stayed well below 4%. The peak for Trump’s second term is 4.2%, with the average running near 3%.
Biden had roughly a year and a half above 5%. The other presidents in this group had few such months or none. Once prices jump that high, they rarely return to earlier levels quickly, which is why groceries, rent, and everyday items still feel expensive even as the rate of increase has eased.
The highest peak and the longest stretch of elevated inflation both belong to the previous administration. In fact, cumulative inflation for the Biden years was about 20%, largely because the government was creating new dollars out of thin air to pay people not to work. In other words, government policy made the dollar that you earned or saved lose one-fifth of its value in just one term.
American families feel the impact of Biden’s presidency every day. But elections are not only about how people feel in the moment; they are about whether the country continues a set of policies or reverses them. The policy approach that coincided with the highest gas peak, the highest inflation peak, and the longest stretch of elevated inflation is the approach that could return, depending on the outcome of the midterm elections.
Four major policy areas are moving decidedly in the right direction: the border, energy, technology, and this hemisphere. Each reduces inflationary pressures over time.
During the Biden years, Customs and Border Protection recorded southwest border apprehensions averaging more than 1.8 million a year. One month alone saw nearly 250,000 southwest apprehensions—more than the entire fiscal year 2026 total so far. Cities spent hundreds of millions on shelter, and Texas spent more than $10 billion of its own money. The flood fueled the fentanyl crisis. That picture has changed.
Preliminary fiscal year 2026 numbers show southwest border apprehensions under 99,000—a 95% drop from the Biden-era annual average and the lowest in agency history. Nationwide encounters fell to about 379,000, the lowest ever recorded. For the first time, there were zero Border Patrol releases for an entire fiscal year.
Drug seizures rose sharply, and border-related deaths identified by the Border Patrol fell nearly 80%. Returning to large-scale illegal crossings and catch-and-release would put those same burdens back on towns, hospitals, schools, and family budgets.
On energy, the prior administration slowed new oil and gas leasing on federal lands, canceled Keystone XL, and paused new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits. Those choices increased U.S. dependence on global markets.
Trump has reversed several of those restrictions. U.S. crude production has reached record levels, now above 13.6 million barrels per day. LNG exports hit record volumes. South Korea committed major investments, including roughly $54 billion toward the long-stalled Alaska LNG project. A landmark arrangement involving Venezuelan reserves expands long-term hemispheric supply.
These steps do not eliminate every global price swing, but they do reduce America’s exposure to overseas disruptions while creating export revenue and high-paying jobs. Slowing domestic production and restricting exports would return the country to the conditions that produced the higher peaks under Biden.
On technology and the broader industrial base, the Biden years relied heavily on targeted subsidies such as the CHIPS Act. Government wanted to pick winners and losers. That produced some factory construction in favored industries like solar, but it did not build the foundation of reliable energy, transmission, skilled trades, and manufacturing capacity needed to lead in artificial intelligence and advanced technology.
The current approach has paired permit reform with large-scale international investment. Taiwan’s companies have pledged hundreds of billions, including TSMC’s major Arizona expansion. Japan is funding up to $21 billion for new GlobalFoundries facilities in New York.
Overall announcements have exceeded $11 trillion in cumulative commitments across semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, metals, and related sectors. Manufacturing employment in durable goods has risen after earlier declines.
A narrow, subsidy-only approach leaves the U.S. vulnerable if competitors pull ahead. Broad investment across energy, infrastructure, and skilled labor is what positions American workers for better wages over the long term.
Finally, for years, American foreign policy treated Latin America and the Caribbean as secondary concerns. Migration pressures; cartel activity; and outside influence from China, Russia, and Iran grew with relatively little sustained attention. Today, the focus is different.
The Trump administration launched the Shield of the Americas coalition, designated major cartels as threats, and paired those steps with increased cooperation and military action, including the removal of Nicolás Maduro and subsequent oil arrangements. In Panama, Chinese operation of key canal terminals was ended. A new agreement with Denmark on Greenland gives the U.S. authority to block non-NATO commercial and military presence and secures overflight and undersea access.
An integrated neighborhood that reduces migration pressure, cartel power, and external influence is more affordable for American communities than constant crisis management next door.
The incessant talk of an affordability crisis treats today’s prices as if they exist in a vacuum. The actual record shows that the highest gas peak, the highest inflation peak, and the longest stretch of elevated inflation in recent times occurred under Biden.
The four directions already underway—securing the border, unleashing American and hemispheric energy, investing across the full technology and industrial ecosystem, and focusing on our own hemisphere—are aimed at reducing the very pressures that showed up in the earlier data. They take time. They are not magic. But reversing them would mean choosing the path that produced the higher peaks and longer periods of strain.
Main Street America deserves to hear the real affordability issue. We cannot afford to reverse course on the border, energy, tech, and this hemisphere.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
