Trump’s Race Against Time
Eight months before the crucial midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump is battling high living costs.
Thomas Kolbe | March 8, 2026
Eight months before the crucial midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump is battling high living costs. The strike against Iran threatens to undo the first successes achieved in the struggle against inflation via falling energy prices.
Ludwig Erhard understood the formula for sustained political success. The equation was as simple as it was powerful: stable money circulating in free markets coordinates the millions of individual decisions made by households, businesses, and credit institutions -- day after day -- in the most efficient manner.
Stable money requires a lean state. Public debt, meanwhile, is widely regarded as the primary cause of inflation, because it is typically financed or diluted not through real growth but through the central bank’s printing press.
Erhard condensed his economic principles in his popular work Prosperity for All -- recommended reading for anyone seeking to understand the roots of Germany’s present political crisis from the perspective of economic policy.
Regardless of how one assesses his chancellorship, the framework designed by the nonpartisan liberal economist remains a civilizational achievement of modernity. It stands for economic rationality, rules-based order, and the conviction that prosperity grows out of freedom. Yet these principles are too often forgotten -- or systematically discredited by political and left-wing ideologies.
In the United States, after years of regulatory decay, this thinking has found renewed resonance. Donald Trump deliberately aligned his campaign with Erhardian principles. He understood that elections are decided at the checkout counter, in housing prices, and at the gas pump. The upcoming midterms -- where half of Congress is up for election -- will effectively become a referendum on living costs and the purchasing power of the working middle class. That class suffered enormously under the expansive monetary regime of the lockdown years. Prices continue to rise due to the artificial liquidity surge, stimulus checks, and state-generated job demand.
After one year in office, the central question therefore arises: Has Trump delivered? Has life actually become more affordable for the average American family? Has the vicious inflationary spiral been broken -- a development with systemic roots in the fiat-credit monetary system and ultimately a secular problem?
The answer, for now, is a qualified yes and no.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/03/trump_s_race_against_time.html
