Trump scoffs at ‘affordability’ as he touts economic policies at Georgia rally

Donald Trump scoffed at the word “affordability” as a political message, describing it at a campaign rally on Wednesday as a term concocted by Democratic political consultants to criticize his presidency. Yet even as the president dismissed the notion of affordability, he devoted much of his speech at Wheeler high school to touting the bread-and-butter benefits of his economic policies.

“So I just want you to remember that if you’re paying a little bit more – a lot of it’s come down now, we got it coming down very rapidly actually,” Trump said in Marietta, an Atlanta suburb, casting higher prices today as a lingering effect of the Biden administration.

Americans are broadly disappointed with Trump’s handling of the economy, with just 33% of voters approving in a recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll, an assessment that could hurt his party’s hopes of bucking historical precedent and retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

The president was in Georgia, a politically divided state where high-profile contests for governor and Senate are playing out, to promote his newly funded “Trump accounts”, which establish tax-free investment funds for every child born through 2028, seeded with $1,000 from the federal government.

Speaking before the president, treasury secretary Scott Bessent described the accounts as the “triumph of capitalism over socialism”, taking a swipe at New York mayor Zohran Mamdani.

“Look around our campuses and classrooms today – apart from those here at Wheeler, of course – you will find that our students are being sold the seductive lie that government can solve every problem, redistribute every dollar and supplant its judgment for our own,” Bessent said.

“In New York, the current mayor rose to power by repackaging failed ideals of the past as a moral cause of the future. But in Georgia, you know that beneath that youthful veneer lies the oldest impulse in politics which is to concentrate power and then to call it compassion.”

Several Republican candidates joined Trump in Marietta, where the president likened US senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat seeking re-election in one of the most closely watched races of the cycle, to the character Pee-wee Herman, portrayed by the late actor Paul Reubens. Polling shows Ossoff with a lead over the Republican nominee in the Senate race, US congressman Mike Collins, who was in Washington where his vote was needed to help pass a budget bill to fund the Iran war and other White House priorities.

Rick Jackson, Georgia’s Republican candidate for governor, pledged to ask the state legislature to match the $1,000 federal contribution to childhood Trump investment accounts if elected. If they failed to do so, Jackson said he would match the figure himself.

Jackson is the founder of Jackson Healthcare, a medical staffing company. His personal net worth has been estimated to be more than $3bn.

In 2024, the state of Georgia recorded more than 126,000 live births, which equates to $126m in annual contributions for Trump accounts. Georgia began the 2026 fiscal year with an unprecedented budget cushion of about $15bn in the bank, with $9bn in unrestricted funds. This surplus resulted from conservative budgeting that began in 2021 as a reaction to pandemic pressures.

That money has become an intense political question, with Republicans looking for ways to provide property tax relief while Democrats arguing for a broader investment in health care and child care support.

Parents, friends and employers will be able to deposit as much as $5,000 a year into the Trump accounts, which will be controlled by parents and guardians until their children turn 18, after which the account holder gains control and can use saved-up funds to pay for college, buy a home or start a business. The $1,000 contributions will cost the government $17bn through 2028, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“For decades, Washington politicians gave our children absolutely nothing but debt,” Trump said. “But the Trump accounts, we’re finally seeing and ensuring that every young American gets a great start in life and a really fair shot at the American dream, which is what we all want. They all aspire to that.”

Trump increased the national debt by about $8tn in his first term, more than any other president on an inflation-adjusted basis and nearly as much as the government accrued during Barack Obama’s two terms in office. Spending during Trump’s second term is on pace with his first-term mark, with an additional $3bn accrued so far.

Inflation currently stands at about 3%, with a decrease of 0.4% last month, driven primarily by a nearly 10% drop in gasoline and oil prices following the short-lived truce in the Iran war. Core inflation was flat for the first time in five years.

But gasoline prices have again risen above $4 a gallon in the US, according to AAA tracking, a direct result of oil prices climbing after reawakened hostilities with Iran and the contested strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway for global oil and gas shipments.

Trump said he had just come from Dover air force base in Delaware to attend the dignified transfer ceremony for US service members killed in the conflict with Iran. The family of 1st Lt Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii accompanied the president on Air Force One to Georgia and attended the event in Marietta, Trump said.

Trump continued to claim that his policies have drawn pledges of $19.2tn into the US economy, a figure that economists from the libertarian Cato Institute and elsewhere consider inflated by illusory investment promises.