At the risk of repeating a phrase that’s lost much of its punch, America really is at an inflection point. That phrase first felt apt after Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, when the “forgotten” voters—those in middle America whose blue-collar jobs vanished under globalization—reshaped the country’s political map. Nearly a decade later, these same voters remain at the center of a broader realignment on the right.
But regardless of who champions new economic policies, their effects tend to fall hardest on the most vulnerable. Many of the proposals emerging from this new conservative coalition risk doing exactly that.
Something fundamental has shifted. Whether you call it MAGA Republicanism, the “New Right,” or post-Trump populism, the message is clear: the old conservative playbook is being rewritten.
Among the New Right, traditional ideas like free markets, limited government, and skepticism of organized labor are no longer sacred. The movement’s slogans—Make America Great Again or “I’ll fix it”—reflect a conviction that America has lost its edge, and that government should help restore it. That impulse has pushed many conservatives toward policies that are a marked shift for conservatives: industrial policy, union revival, and economic nationalism.
There’s a kernel of truth driving this shift. Inflation erodes purchasing power. Combine that with the perception of stagnant wages, and it’s easy to see why many Americans feel stuck. But the data complicates the story. When adjusted for inflation, the purchasing power of the average U.S. household is at an all-time high, having rebounded from the COVID-19 slump.
Even poverty, regardless of how it is measured, has declined. The old “official” poverty rate, based on tripling the cost of a minimal food budget, has long been outdated. The newer Supplemental Poverty Measure, which includes housing, utilities, and internet costs, offers a more complete picture. By both metrics, poverty has steadily fallen. From 1967 through 2022, no income group has seen its real income decline.
Inequality helps shed light on the perception that runs against reality.
Everyone is better off in absolute terms, but not in relative ones. Inflation-adjusted wage growth for the bottom quintile is 15 percent, compared with 78 percent for the top quintile. Spending tells a similar story: from 1984 to 2023 the bottom quintile’s expenditure rose 6 percent after inflation, versus double digits for higher earners. Everyone climbed the ladder—but not at the same pace.
That gap between perception and progress has become the emotional engine of the New Right. The trouble is, its chosen remedies such as tariffs, protectionism, and union expansion, risk making the problem worse.
Take unions. They’re deeply tied to the American imagination of stable, middle-class life, and their decline feels symbolic of something larger. But unions aren’t a cure-all. Research from the American Consumer Institute shows that union wage premiums have shrunk in recent years, and in some sectors, collective bargaining has meant fewer benefits for workers and worse outcomes for consumers.
Part of the conservative turn toward labor makes sense when connected to the frustration with higher education being played out during this administration. Many see the four-year degree as an overpriced ticket that no longer leads to the middle-class. They have a point.
Yet while conservatives rightly criticized President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, they too often ignored how federal lending itself helped inflate tuition in the first place. Loans divorced from earning potential or repayment likelihood flooded universities with easy money, fueling price hikes. By not addressing the structural problem, conservatives ceded the debate to those offering quick fixes instead of lasting reform.
Housing tells a similar story. Costs have risen faster than inflation, but the leading policy ideas—rent control, eviction bans, and punitive landlord measures—target the symptoms, not the cause. Sociologist Matthew Desmond argues in Poverty, by America that “being poor is expensive,” pointing to higher returns for landlords renting to low-income tenants. But even he concedes much of that margin covers the greater risk of default.
Misdiagnosing the disease leads to the wrong prescription.
Despite economic gains, many Americans feel trapped on the wrong side of the prosperity divide. Their discontent is genuine and politically potent. But the new rightward populism risks turning that frustration into policy that undermines growth and opportunity, particularly for those with the least to spare.
The lesson for free-market advocates isn’t to lecture voters about GDP charts. It’s to engage their concerns with empathy and offer tangible solutions that reconnect economic theory to lived reality. Markets remain the best engine for broad prosperity, but they can only do their work if protected in public policy. In politics, that means their defenders must speak to the people they’re meant to serve.
Tirzah Duren is the President and CEO of the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, follow us on X @ConsumerPal.