'He’s the president now': Georgia voters still waiting for Trump to fulfill promise to lower prices

20 February

Former President Donald Trump in Tampa, Florida in July 2022 (Gage Skidmore)

President Donald Trump is moving through a flurry of executive orders, budget cuts, and firings at breakneck speed, and some Georgia voters are glad to see it — but they’re still waiting on his promise to lower prices. The Guardian’s George Chidi spoke with people in Zebulon, Ga. about the president’s time in office so far.

“A lot of people might agree or disagree with what he’s doing, but I would say that he’s done a lot of things very quickly,” Estefany Frost told the Guardian in a piece published Thursday. “I like that, as the president, he’s doing things he promised people, because that’s what people voted for.”

Last year, Trump had spoken to Trump at a campaign stop in Zebulon. Frost told him at the time that inflation made it difficult for her to run her restaurant. She’s still waiting, though, to see any help with prices.

“I mean, he’s the president now. He can work something out for us,” she said.

The daughter of a documented immigrant from Mexico, Frost said that Trump’s focus on undocumented migrants could end up increasing prices. “She said she wants Trump to create a program for undocumented immigrants who have been in the US for decades and ‘have done nothing bad,’” Chidi writes.

Jeff Clay, a construction worker, agreed that Trump was moving quickly.

“He’s coming at everything just a whirlwind,” Clay said. “You don’t know what he’s going do next. I mean, he’s basically covered about everything he said he was going to do, or he’s trying, and I’m sure there’s more that could be done. He needs to drain the swamp up there at the Capitol.”

“He’s taking a sledgehammer to it,” Clay added. “He’s pretty much exposed things. That’s his main mission, I think. He knows he’s not going to get everything he wants to do, but he’s going to expose it all.”

Chidi met Justin Raines in a supermarket. Raines said that he is still deciding about what he thinks of the president.

“Me personally, I don’t get into politics,” he said. “I mean, I just look at the good and the bad for whatever president. I’m kind of in between right now. He had a lot of ideas before the campaign took place. Don’t get me wrong, he still got a lot of good ideas. He just hasn’t put them in place yet. I mean, he’s going to be president for four years. You’ve got to give him a chance.”

But like Frost, he is waiting for lower prices. “We’re in a supermarket,” he said. “As far as groceries, gas, cars, homes… I mean, people are struggling to pay for their homes… Lower prices. That was one of his big things that I paid attention to.”

Clay, more optimistic, argued that Trump’s cuts to the government would lead to lower prices.

“I’d like to see some of the prices – especially food and stuff – come down,” Clay said. “And I think eventually, once he goes through there and gets some of the non-necessary spending that they’ve been doing, I think some of that will come down.”

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