President Donald Trump’s war against Iran is exacerbating America’s already-poor economy, prompting Republicans to worry that the longer this goes on, the worse it will be politically — “full stop.”
“The longer this goes on, the worse it is politically, full stop,” Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett, who Trump appointed to the State Department during his first term, told The Wall Street Journal. He added that Trump is focused on foreign policy to the neglect of domestic affairs.
“‘America first’ has now turned into America strikes first,” Bartlett wrote. His skepticism was shared by Sen. Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.), who told reporters on Tuesday that voters have a “general skepticism” about the war, adding “I also appreciate the fact that Donald Trump, the populist that he is, isn’t making national security decisions based on polls.”
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, argued for The New York Times on Wednesday that there are two pieces of bad news in terms of the current American economy.
"The bad news comes in two parts," Krugman wrote. "First, any hopes that this war might be extremely brief are fading. The Trump Administration may have imagined that decapitating the Iranian government would bring swift regime change, but the Islamic state isn't a government of mere thugs — yes, they're evil thugs, but they're also serious religious fanatics facing what, for them, is an existential threat. And their grip on power isn't that easy to break…. Second, war in the middle of the world's most important oil-producing region — which is also a key source of liquefied natural gas — inevitably has major consequences for energy prices."
Although American and Israeli air superiority might have previously been able to curtail Iran's ability to retaliate, Krugman added that we live “in an age in which even third-rate powers have the ability to launch missiles and drones, Iran has a huge stockpile of drones and also has ballistic missiles that are destructive, hard to intercept, and have a 1200-mile range.” As a result, “the potential targets at risk include key parts of the region's energy infrastructure. Above all, the war threatens tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which is how the bulk of Middle Eastern oil and gas normally reaches world markets. And the risk of Iranian attacks has effectively closed the Strait."
The Iran war is not the only factor harming the American economy. As conservative commentator Mona Charen wrote for The Bulwark in February, “voters are rarely able to connect policy to outcomes, but they have done so in the case of tariffs. Back in 2024, Americans were about equally divided on the question of trade, with some favoring higher tariffs and roughly similar numbers opting for lower tariffs. Experience has changed their views.”
As Bloomberg reported in February, the US economy is in a so-called "jobless boom” wherein the economy grew at 2.7 percent last year while employment stagnated at only 15,000 jobs per month, far below the 50,000 per month originally expected. KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk compared the economy to a “one-legged chair.”
“We have never seen anything later in an expansion like what we are seeing today, and that’s what makes it so unusual and hard to judge about where we are going,” Swonk explained. “At the end of the day we are sitting on a one-legged stool, which is not the most stable place to be.”
