Voters and Trump See a Very Different Economic Reality

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Daniel Bach (0:28)

President Trump uses his State of the Union to celebrate an economic turnaround many voters aren't seeing.

Donald Trump (0:35)

Members of Congress and my fellow Americans, our nation is back, bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before.

Daniel Bach (0:46)

Plus, Warner says Paramount's sweetened offer could well best Netflix. And Anthropic says competition could lead it to relax the AI safety rules it's known for. It's Wednesday, February 25th. I'm Daniel Bach for the Wall Street Journal filling in for Luke Vargas. And here's the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

We begin in Washington where President Trump has given the longest State of the Union address in US history, referring to his first year in office as a turnaround for the ages. In a speech full of showmanship and patriotism, Trump celebrated his immigration enforcement operations and heralded his economic agenda at a time when polls show him struggling to connect with the public on the economy and Republicans bracing for a challenging midterm election. Our White House reporter, Meridith McGraw, has been covering the speech from Washington throughout the night and joins me now. Meridith, what did you make of the address?

Meridith McGraw (1:50)

The goal of President Trump's speech really was to promote his record during his first year back in office and try to make the case to the American people that he's working to make their lives safer and more affordable.

Donald Trump (2:03)

After just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before and they turn around for the ages.

Meridith McGraw (2:14)

So a lot of the speech was a defense of his policies, whether it was a crackdown at the border on illegal immigration or his big beautiful bill and no tax on tips or the Trump accounts for children. But he really didn't roll out too many new policy announcements and really stuck to trying to sell the American people on what he's done so far.

Daniel Bach (2:38)

At the top of the speech, he seemed to focus on the economic agenda because that is where Trump has staked his claim. And it's a big deal for Republicans in the next year ahead of the midterms, right?

Donald Trump (2:49)

Yeah.

Meridith McGraw (2:49)

And you know, polling shows Trump really lagging when it comes to the economy. Voters have a lot of concerns about the cost of living. And in Trump's speech, he tried to blame affordability issues on democratic policies and claimed he's working to try to turn things around by lowering the cost of energy of health care and housing.

Donald Trump (3:10)

Which will be better health care at a much lower cost.

Meridith McGraw (3:15)

And you know, he did lay out a couple of new policies, like a plan to offer Americans access to retirement accounts that federal workers have and another plan to have top tech companies promise to pay more for electricity in areas where they're building new AI data centers. So, he was really trying to target areas that he has real vulnerabilities with. And the Republican Party has real vulnerabilities with going into the midterm elections.

Daniel Bach (3:42)

A key economic plank for the president, of course, is his tariffs. He doubled down on those despite some of the Supreme Court justices being in the chamber.

Donald Trump (3:51)

But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made, right, Scott? Knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them. And therefore, they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court's unfortunate involvement.

Meridith McGraw (4:18)

That was one thing I was really watching for, was how he was going to talk about his tariff policies after the Supreme Court struck down his use of emergency powers just last week. And, you know, sitting front row there, in front of him, were four justices, some of whom ruled against Trump's tariffs. And Trump didn't go off on them too much. He just said the ruling was unfortunate, but he really tried to defend his tariff policy and say that they're still forging ahead with using tariffs as an economic tool.