Skeptical Americans don’t buy Trump’s 'short-term pain' pitch: analysis

While Donald Trump ran and was elected on the promise of easing the cost of living crisis “on day one”, since taking office, his administration has leaned into the message that if Americans will put up with “short-term pain” they will receive some form of gain. But as CNN analyst Aaron Blake explained, that’s a bargain that the public is unlikely to accept.

This pain-for-gain logic has been applied to a number of situations, but according to Blake, two loom largest.

The first came in early 2025, when Trump began his global tariff project, tacking tariffs onto price tags that were ultimately paid by American consumers. At the time, he was so excited at the prospect that he made the all-caps suggestion that the pain would be worth it, posting, in all-caps, “Will there be some pain? Yes, maybe (and maybe not!)...It will all be worth the price that must be paid."

Even as the economic situation began to look uneven, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick assured Americans that things would be better than ever by the end of the year, saying that “starting the third quarter, you start to feel some Donald Trump, and in the fourth quarter you will feel the power of Donald Trump’s economy.”

That’s not how things turned out. Just today, a report from the Department of Commerce revealed that economic growth has in fact slowed precipitously, while inflation has continued to persist. 2025 ended up being the worst year for job growth outside a recession in more than 20 years.

So as Blake notes, “The tariffs bargain hasn’t exactly paid off.”

Now with the war on Iran and resultant hikes in gas prices, the White House is once again asking Americans to tighten their belts.

“You’ve got to go through short-term pain to solve a long-term problem,” said Energy Secretary Chris Wright, while Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt asserted that the “temporary” price spike would “result in lower gas prices in the long-term.” And Trump himself posted, “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay.”

Americans are already skeptical of this claim, with over two-thirds saying they expect gas prices to continue increasing. And on top of the cost at the pump, Blake argues that Americans are also wary of what is clearly an expanding war with a growing number of American casualties.

When the tariff bargain proved to be so blatantly fruitless, demanding that Americans accept the short-term pain for gain bargain yet again is, according to Blake, “a big ask.”

Even Trump’s allies know this. As Steve Bannon recently said, “The American people are not known for taking short-term pain when it comes to economics, particularly oil and gas.”

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