President Donald Trump said he’s “very proud” of the economy and claimed to have “fixed” the affordability crisis—even as huge numbers of Americans struggle to pay for food and other basics.
“The one thing that they don’t say anymore is ‘affordability,’ because I fixed the problem that they created,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News that aired before the Super Bowl on Sunday.
Throughout much of his first year back in office, Trump blamed poor inflation and weak jobs numbers on the “mess” he claimed to have inherited from former President Joe Biden.
But in Sunday’s interview, which was recorded at the White House last Wednesday, he told NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas that the country has finally entered the Trump economy.
“I’m very proud of it,” he said. “You know we have a GDP of 5.6 [percent].”
Gross domestic product is projected to grow by 2.3 percent for 2025, not 5.6 percent, the consulting firm EY reported in late January.
That lower growth is driven largely by AI-related investment, strong exports, and steady consumer spending, with the caveat that consumer spending is “heavily reliant” on increased borrowing and drawdowns of savings, according to EY.
Under Trump, household debt has reached an all-time high, even higher than during the COVID-19 pandemic, and planned layoffs have reached their highest levels since the Great Recession.
A Pew Research Center survey released this month found that 71 percent of Americans were “very concerned” about healthcare costs, and 66 percent were “very concerned” about the price of food and consumer goods.
The price of housing and electricity was also a worry, with 62 percent and 51 percent of respondents reporting they were “very concerned” about the respective costs.
More than half of respondents, or 52 percent, said the country was worse off thanks to Trump’s economic policies, while 19 percent said the president’s policies had “not had much effect” when it came to taming economic headwinds.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Speaking to NBC, Trump said the economy in 2026 would “be even better.”
“You know, we have hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our country, actually trillions,” he said. “$18 trillion being invested in our country as we speak, and their factories and plants, and thousands of businesses being built all over the country.”
The president has repeatedly claimed that he wielded the threat of tariffs to secure unprecedented investments in the U.S., though the conservative Cato Institute describes the brag as an “$18 trillion hoax.”
“Not one of the several hundred economists in the White House and Cabinet agencies has even tried to explain what the number is supposed to measure or how it was fabricated,” economist Alan Reynolds wrote this month. “What could it possibly mean to say that Trump ‘brought in’ $18 trillion? That number is nearly as big as China’s GDP in an entire year. Where did it come from? Where has it gone?”
Trump’s economy, however, is paying dividends for at least one group. In 2025, Trump’s policies fueled a surge in billionaires’ wealth, which reached record levels.
