U.S. President Donald Trump with Secretary of State Marco Rubio (White House image from Flickr)
According to one poll after another, soaring prices are a top concern of voters in the 2026 midterms. President Donald Trump's handling of the economy and inflation, polls show, is a key factor. That includes grocery prices, and according to Bloomberg News columnist Mary Ellen Klas, the "political fallout" has repercussions not only for Trump, but for Republicans in general — including top Trump administration officials like Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
"Trump may not care about the political fallout, but his likely successors — Vance, Secretary Marco Rubio and every Republican left in Congress — should," Klas argues in her Bloomberg column. "They're the ones who will be left holding the (grocery) bag."
Vance and Rubio are both being mentioned as possible GOP presidential candidates for 2028.
Klas, in her column, emphasizes that "food prices play an outsized role in how Americans view affordability."
"When you're bombarded with bigger price tags and shrinking product sizes on every trip to the grocery store," Klas writes, "it's an in-your-face reminder that we're losing purchasing power. It's leading to widespread anxiety. According to an Associated Press-NORC poll released in August, 41 percent of Americans say they are concerned about being able to afford groceries, up from 24 percent in April."
Rising prices, according to polls, played a major role in the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. Trump relentlessly attacked the Democratic nominee, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, on inflation, promising to lower prices "on Day 1" if he won. But roughly 19 and one half months into Trump's second presidency, inflation is still a major worry for voters.
"If the 2024 election turned on the price of eggs," Klas explains, "the 2026 midterm may well turn on the price of the rest of what's in Americans' shopping carts. And 2028 could shape up the same way: According to forecasts, eating is going to get more expensive for at least another year. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service predicts that the average food bill will climb at least 3 percent in 2026 and another 2.4 percent in 2027."
The Bloomberg News columnist adds, "Those averages don't account for the commodities that will see even sharper price increases this year. Among them, beef will be up 9.8 percent and fresh vegetables up 5.9 percent. Perhaps the hardest thing for voters to get used to is the cumulative rise in the cost of groceries. The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) says overall food prices have increased only 3 percent in the last year, but since January 2020, they've risen 30 percent."
Michigan State University economist David Ortega warns that food prices "rarely come down."
Ortega, in an interview, told Klas, "Since the turn of the last century, food prices have decreased only twice — and they were both for a very short period of time. So, when voters and consumers hear from politicians, 'We're going to bring prices down,' it sets the expectation that it's possible when reality and economics point the other direction."