U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 25, 2025. REUTERS Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump’s wars against Venezuela and Iran, as well as his seemingly-planned war against Cuba, have constituted one of the worst self-dealt economic wounds a president has voluntarily inflicted upon themselves in American history, according to economic experts.
In an MS NOW interview on Thursday, Iraq war veteran and entrepreneur Paul Rieckhoff described the rampant inflation exacerbated by Trump’s wars as “the thing he can't spin out of. No matter how many times he says the Iran war is going to be over, his base remembers that. He said no new wars. He said no regime change wars, and they're still ongoing. His base also remembers that he was going to bring down the price of milk, and every day they see that gas prices are still high — and that's going to continue throughout the summer.”
Rieckhoff added, “This is dragging down the Republican brand even more than it's dragging down him personally. That's why I think there is an opportunity this fall for the Democrats. I'm not counting on them to take advantage of it, but there is a tremendous opportunity, maybe around this issue more than anything else.”
When the MS NOW host added that 76 percent of voters say they are concerned with their personal finances, and 77 percent say their incomes are not keeping up with inflation, Rieckhoff pointed out that Republicans are unwilling to stop Trump even though most of the rest of America is fed up with him. Then economist Ed Elson, the co-host of “Prof G Markets” podcast, compared Trump’s attempts to walk back inflation and the Iran war as analogous to his TACO approach to tariffs — with TACO standing for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
“I’d say it's a lot harder to TACO about a war than it is to TACO about tariffs,” Elson explained. “Let me break down what's happened: back in April of last year, before the tariffs, we had 2.3 percent inflation. Then the tariffs came — we all said they would be inflationary — and inflation rose to 3 percent within the year, roughly a four percentage point added to inflation because of the tariffs. Then Trump decided to bomb Iran without clear objectives and without any contingency plans if this thing doesn’t work out. We do that, oil prices skyrocketed, and now we're at 4.2 percent.”
Elson added that Trump could reduce inflation by getting out of Iran and eliminating his tariffs, “but it's never going to happen, because that would mean admitting defeat, which is something he will never do. This is one of the greatest self-inflicted economic injuries in American history, and because of his pride and ego, I think it's only going to get worse.”
A conservative commentator writing for The Bulwark also noted on Thursday that Trump seems determined to spin his way out of America’s inflation problem — and that this will not work.
“Inflation rose to 4.2 percent in May, the highest increase since a 2023 surge under President Joe Biden in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic,” The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone wrote on Thursday. “President Trump, who pledged to ‘quickly defeat inflation’ upon returning to the White House, and who in September lied that the economy had ‘no inflation,’ responded to the news with yet another callously stupid Trumpism.”
He later added “You might be able to try to spin inflation rates, as [South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim] Scott does here, but ultimately, you can’t argue with them—just ask Kamala Harris or Joe Biden,” Perticone explained, referring to the Democratic president and vice president who lost the 2024 election. “Even if voters don’t follow the latest CPI or PPI reports, they notice the climbing prices when opening their wallets.”