Billy Edmonson voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 because of his stances on border security, gun rights and the economy. One year after casting his ballot, Edmonson is finding it difficult to make ends meet.
“Everything’s already so expensive. … That’s the worst thing about his presidency so far, is he promised things coming down and prices are not coming down. I make more money than I’ve ever made in my life right now, and it has, financially, been a struggle,” said Edmonson, a 35-year-old construction worker from Missouri.
Edmonson recalled that Trump promised to start lowering prices on his first day in office.
“It just doesn’t seem like there’s been a whole lot of focus on, ‘Hey, let’s get these prices down.’ It’s just been like, ‘Hey, prices are high because Biden did this.’ It’s like, well, Biden’s not in office anymore,” said Edmonson, a self-described independent, later adding, “It’s personally frustrating.”
Edmonson is not alone. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of registered voters, including 30% of Republicans, said in the recent national NBC News poll that Trump has fallen short of their expectations on the cost of living and the economy. After being one of the big reasons why Trump won a return to the White House in 2024, Trump’s performance on the economy has become one of the big drags on his second term.
While a number of Trump voters told NBC News in January that they’d give Trump a relatively long leash to improve the economy, the new interviews suggest that for some he’s running out of slack.
“It just doesn’t seem like there’s been a whole lot of focus on, ‘Hey, let’s get these prices down.’ It’s just been like, ‘Hey, prices are high because Biden did this.’ It’s like, well, Biden’s not in office anymore.”
Billy Edmonson
Trump himself has cast doubt on surveys showing Americans are anxious about the economy, telling Fox News this week, “I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.”
NBC News spoke to 18 Trump voters who participated in the most recent NBC News poll and said Trump had not met their expectations on the economy to explore how this group was thinking about Trump and experiencing the economy — and whether they were still committed to supporting his party.
None regretted their vote for Trump last year, in many cases because of a deep frustration with Democrats. A handful said they’d be open to voting for Democrats in the future, though most planned to keep voting Republican.
When it comes to the economy, many said the pain they’re feeling is real.
“He and his advisers claim the country is going well, prices are going down, the tariffs are doing wonderfully,” Susan, a 66-year-old retiree from Nevada, said of Trump. (Several interviewees declined to share their last name when discussing politics, with some citing the nation’s polarized political atmosphere.)
“But when you go to the store, the prices are up,” she added.
Navigating high prices
During and after his 2024 campaign, Trump not only promised to halt inflation but to bring prices lower after several years of post-Covid growth. That promise, made even though overall consumer prices essentially never decrease over time, cuts to the core of some of his voters’ complaints.
“It’s always hard to bring down prices when somebody else has screwed something up like [President Joe Biden] did,” Trump said during a news conference in January, weeks before being sworn in. “We’re going to have prices down. I think you’re going to see some pretty drastic price reductions.”
Jeremiah, a 48-year-old Republican from Utah who works in the aerospace industry, has voted for Trump each time he ran for president and backed him last year because he saw Trump as a change agent. But he said Trump’s handling of the economy so far has been “mediocre.”
“I was definitely hoping to see a lot of prices come back down, like gas for your car, diesel, utilities, groceries. I was hoping to see it all come back down and level out at least, but it’s not. It just keeps getting worse,” Jeremiah said.
“I have a 20-year-old son and a 17-year-old daughter, and they can’t live on their own,” he later added. “My son’s a welder, and he makes $28 an hour, and he’s still not out on his own. Everything is just so overpriced. It’s ridiculous. When I graduated high school, I moved out and had a $300 a month apartment, piece of cake, 10 bucks an hour.”
Edmonson, the Missouri construction worker, noted that he travels often for work. But motel and grocery prices have jumped, even for items like a can of soup, he said. And the high costs have him reconsidering his work on the road.
“It’s almost getting to the point where it’s time for me to find something at home,” Edmonson said, later adding, “Because if I’m gonna sink, I might as well sink at home.”
“I was surprised that the groceries haven’t went down. In fact, they keep going up.”
Roxanne Novit
Patty, a 70-year-old Republican retiree from Pennsylvania, blamed Trump for the country’s economic woes.
Trump, she said, “has always been a very rich man. He’s never had to do anything his whole life. He’s never had to go shop. So, he has no idea what a true working person in their daily life has to do.”
“I was surprised that the groceries haven’t went down. In fact, they keep going up. So that would be my biggest disappointment,” said Roxanne Novit, a 69-year-old retiree from Colorado and a self-described Republican.
Susan, the Nevada retiree who is not registered with any party, said Trump’s handling of the economy “is not at all what I expected,” noting she was hopeful Trump would focus on “opening up mining and gasoline exploration.”
“It seems like they’re moving a little slow on that because they’re spending all the time on the tariffs or making nice to the Chinese president or something like that,” Susan said.
Giving him time
But some voters were willing to give Trump some more time to turn things around, even among the subset who said they believe he’s fallen short. Overall, most Republicans still back Trump on the economy and other issues, according to the NBC News poll and other surveys.
“I would like to see the economy turn up a little quicker, but everything takes time. You can’t expect it overnight,” said independent Robert Duran, 68, a retired law enforcement officer from Massachusetts.
William Scheuer, a 68-year-old New Yorker, who said he voted for Trump in 2024 because he’s “old-fashioned” on things like social issues, agreed that Trump has been “falling a little short” on the economy, specifically noting prices.
“Everything’s going up, it’s going up more than what the government is telling you,” he said, before adding he’s “confident [Trump] will” turn it around.
“I would like to see the economy turn up a little quicker, but everything takes time. You can’t expect it overnight.”
Robert Duran
Craig Lovejoy, a 32-year-old Florida independent who works in pest control, said Trump is doing “better than many” presidents on addressing the economy.
“I don’t think that one president will be all it takes to get things back on track, but I think we’re headed in the right direction,” Lovejoy said.
Some voters were sympathetic to Trump’s tariff policies in particular, even as they were navigating higher prices.
“The steak I used to buy that used to be like 40 bucks is now 80. I get it,” said Jason Olson, a 50-year-old small-business owner from South Carolina who typically backs Republicans. “And I know tariffs have raised prices on a lot of things as well. But I also understand the reason behind the tariffs are they want to bring industry back to the U.S.”
Tim Fleming, a 42-year-old self-described libertarian who works in injection molding at a factory in Tennessee, agreed that Trump’s presidency has been “a little disappointing.” He raised frustrations about how Trump’s pledge not to tax overtime and tips was implemented as a tax deduction, so he and others won’t see the fruits of that until they file their taxes next year.
“My overtime is still getting taxed; my bonuses are still getting taxed,” he said. “It was not what it was made out to be.”
But he noted he believes he’s seen the direct fruits of Trump’s tariff push: the return of jobs in his county that had been offshored to Mexico.
“The tariffs helped create a lot of jobs where I live,” Fleming said.
Those comments come as the White House has tried to argue the administration is making important strides on affordability.
“The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day. We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X the day after Election Day.
Down on Democrats
While several Trump voters raised concerns about the economy and high prices, none of the voters, who are largely Republicans or independents, said they regretted their choice last year.
“I wouldn’t change my vote, but I’m not happy,” said Elliot Muegge, a 32-year-old farmer from Oklahoma.
Amanda, a 48-year-old postal worker from Missouri, said she still finds it difficult to make a budget because of high food prices. But, she said, she thinks former Vice President Kamala Harris “would have been worse.”
“I wouldn’t change my vote, but I’m not happy.”
Elliot Muegge
A self-described conservative, Amanda said she would be open to supporting a Democratic candidate in a future election, but “not a progressive, more like an old-school Democrat.”
A handful of Trump voters also said they would be open to supporting Democrats in the future, depending on the candidate. But others said backing a Democrat was off the table.
“I think that they pander to friend groups and minorities and they look silly doing it. It’s fake,” Fleming, of Tennessee, said.
“I haven’t found a single Democrat” that inspires trust, said Lovejoy, of Florida.
Edmonson, the Missouri construction worker, said it could be years before he considers supporting a Democratic candidate, noting his strong support for gun rights.
“They just don’t care about people in general. They want to say they care about people, but that — to me, all they want is, is votes,” Edmonson said, noting he is still frustrated with Trump.
“I don’t feel like I can vote for a Democrat candidate,” Edmonson said. “I feel like I don’t have a candidate really.”
Still, others who are open to backing Democrats warn that the economic angst coursing through the country — which Trump used to his advantage amid anger at the Biden administration in 2024 — could translate to political losses for Republicans.
“Did he not promise the American people — Day 1 — that prices were going to go down? We are now in Month 11 and things continue to rise,” said Patty, the 70-year-old Pennsylvanian. While she said she regularly votes Republican, she’s split her ticket in the past, and she said she likes her state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro.
“The Republican Party is in for a rude awakening, and I think it’s not a bad thing,” she added.
Muegge, from Oklahoma, shared a similar sentiment about the economy hurting Trump’s political standing. While he doesn’t blame Trump specifically for the cost of living, he expressed frustration about how he “unfairly manipulates the markets with his social media presence.”
He pointed to a recent conversation he had with his father, also a Republican.
“He and I were having a conversation, and he said, ‘I hate Trump.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you do, too? I thought I was alone on this island,’” he said.
“I don’t know if other people are saying that quietly behind their own closed doors and then pounding their chest in public,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
