As the U.S. is fooled – again – by con man Donald Trump, get ready for a bumpy, four-year ride in your financial life

The American people are being conned a second time by Donald Trump, probably the greatest con man in American history, as they voted to give him the presidency again.

Now Trump, who lied more than 35,000 times in his first presidential term, is the president elect. He’ll be in the White House again in January.

I feel like I’m living in an alternative reality.

What happened

Two days after the election, commentators are talking about how voters were upset about the economy, and they believed what Trump said about improving their financial situation. Another Trump lie.

It’s likely that inflation will increase in a Trump second term. If he puts a 60 percent tariff, or import tax, on Chinese goods and a 10 percent tariff on other imports, corporations and businesses will pass those increases right on to consumers.

Trump won’t do anything to help everyday Americans just like his policies and action in his first term didn’t help them.

Price gouging

The truth is that the economy has made a recovery during the Biden administration after the pandemic. A lingering problem is that food and housing prices have remained high.

Food prices are up largely due to price gouging by corporations. The Democrats and the Biden administration didn’t emphasize this enough and didn’t do much about it.

I did research on price gouging and found that it’s causing more than 50 percent of price increases in the last few years.

Why didn’t Democrats go after corporations on this? Maybe because they didn’t want to offend their corporate donors in an election year?

Corporations have been raking in high profits and using those mainly to pay dividends to their shareholders and to build up their stockpiles of cash. Accountable.US, a government watchdog group, is doing a great job on research and reporting on this.

Cutting regulations

With the election of Donald Trump Tuesday, most corporate leaders are quite happy. Trump says he’ll slash regulations, which he claims will cut costs for consumers, another lie. What it actually does is make things worse for consumers though more air and water pollution, less food inspection, more unsafe and expensive prescription and over-the-counter drugs, more corporate mergers, higher bank fees, and much more.

During Trump’s first administration, I wrote about how many more people would become ill and die due to the slashing of air pollution regulations. Trump and his agencies weakened or abolished more than 125 environmental and climate regulations in his first term.

Cutting regulations saves money for corporations. Do these savings get passed on to consumers? No. Corporations emphasize giving returns to shareholders over cutting costs for consumers.

Elon Musk is the person Trump has said he will appoint to head a new government efficiency commission, so Musk will likely be one of the main architects to cut government regulations and downsize the federal government. Musk, who was seen at Trump rallies jumping around on the stage like a jumping jack, has said he would cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. These cuts would decimate government services, including food programs, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Corporate leaders have been laughing all the way to the bank on how they’re been able to price gouge and keep prices high while President Joe Biden, then Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, took the blame.

Now that Trump is the president-elect, corporate leaders are laughing at the American people. Big business continues to rule America. The consequences will be devastating.

It’s also likely that interest rates will stay high in the next few years. As inflation goes up again, the Fed will increase interest rates to curb inflation.

Racism and sexism

While many political analysts are talking about the economy being the cause of the big Trump victory, few are talking about racism and sexism.

When I called a friend of mine, who studies issues of race and gender and the media, she said, yes, racism and sexism were a factor in this year’s election.

It appears with the election results that men got what they wanted. Trump courted disaffected men voters. Their votes for Trump weren’t about just the economy, crime, or immigration – their votes were about reasserting their dominance.

On racism, I couldn’t believe the racist things Trump said about Kamala Harris and minorities. Race is traditionally a factor in presidential elections in the United States. Trump knows this and uses race as a means of dividing the country.

That Donald Trump, with his racist views and policies, could increase his support among Hispanic and Black voters is surprising.

It’s people of color and low-income people that are going to suffer the most under another Trump presidency.

About 65 percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck. How much will that increase during Trump’s four-year term?

What to do

During Trump’s first administration, I wrote frequently about his anti-consumer policies. I’ll keep doing that.

What should you do in your personal finance life?

Don’t expect any help from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Trump’s second administration, an agency that takes consumer complaints and develops rules. The CFPB is likely to reverse Biden-era rules, such as limits on bank fees, and significantly scale back its regulatory agenda as Trump puts new leadership in the agency.

Here’s what action I suggested consumers take in my newsletter that went out Thursday:

Get ready for a rocky ride in your financial life after the election of Donald Trump as president. If you have a large purchase pending, such as a new or used car, consider buying it before Trump takes office if it fits in with your budgeting plan. Inflation is likely to go up again and interest rates are likely to remain high. In addition, beef up your emergency fund as much as possible because government services and health plans may be weakened or eliminated.

Final thoughts

So, God bless America. It may be the only hope we have. It will take years if not decades to repair the damage Donald Trump is going to do to the federal government and the lives of the American people.

Comments

[Laurie Stone]

The whole thing is beyond sad and scary. I like your ideas about taking precautions before he comes into office, and steeling ourselves for what's to come.

[Rita]

It's going to be such a difficult four years in many ways. The Right's propaganda worked. As Mary Trump said in her blog, "We learned a lot earlier this week about the many reasons we lost—from the institutional and structural and characterological—but the main reason, which is both a cause and effect, is the massive, coordinated right-wing media ecosphere which has overtaken traditional/legacy media and which the left has done nothing to challenge."