Vance calls for patience as Trump admin cleans up up Biden’s affordability ‘disaster’

Vice President JD Vance called for Americans to be patient with the Trump administration as it grapples with the cost of living crisis, arguing that “we inherited a disaster” from former President Joe Biden.

“For people now that maybe are still suffering from the Biden-Harris economic hangover, when do we really see the engine of the economy start to take off?” Fox News host Sean Hannity asked the veep in a one-on-one interview that aired Thursday.

“Well, some of it’s already started, Sean, but some of it is going to take a long time because we inherited a disaster,” Vance responded. “We inherited the highest peacetime debt and deficits in the history of the United States of America. We inherited the worst inflation crisis in — in at least the last 40 years and I think probably longer.

“So, a lot of Americans, when we took over, they were struggling. They either were underemployed, or they didn’t have a job altogether. Their wages had been stagnant. And the president of United States said the most important thing that we have to fix is for people to be able to live a good life,” he went on.

“We need — we need a good job to pay good wages. We need people to be able to go to the grocery store and actually buy what they need for their family. That takes a little bit of time.”

Vance spoke nine days after Republicans suffered bruising off-year election defeats in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races and as a new poll shows Americans souring on the state of the economy.

The Economist/YouGov survey released this week found that 55% of Americans said the economy was getting worse while just 20% said it was getting better.

The same poll found that a plurality of Americans (40%) rated the stae of the economy as “poor” while merely 25% described it was “excellent” or “good.”

Perhaps most alarmingly for the administration, only 14% of Americans said they were better off financially than at this time last year, while 81% said their finances were the same or worse.

The hard economic data bear out Americans’ feelings.

In the 12 months ending in August, the most recent period for which full statistics are available due to the recent government shutdown, real average hourly earnings that are adjusted for inflation rose 0.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — similar to growth figures seen in the final months of the Biden administration.

Prices continue to rise. Food prices increased 3.2% over the last 12 months, led by items like meat, poultry, fish and eggs (5.6%) as well as nonalcoholic beverages (4.6%).

Publicly, Trump is insisting that better times are around the corner.

“We’re working to make things less expensive. We’re cutting some prices very substantially, but what is terrible is the Democrats have catchphrases,” he told the Washington Examiner in an interview published Friday.

“They came up with a soundbite. Affordability. Affordability. Well, what we are doing is making things cost less.”

Trump went on to predict “we’re going to have $2 gasoline soon — we’re going to get very close.” (The current average price of a gallon of regular gas is $3.08, roughly the same as this time last year, according to AAA.)

Privately, meanwhile, the president has been looking outside Washington for ideas.

Sources told The Post’s Charlie Gasparino that Trump polled top CEOs — including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Blackrock’s Larry Fink, and Goldman Sach’s David Solomon — during a Wednesday night dinner at the White House about how to bring costs down for Americans, even while insisting his policies would spur “between 5 and 6% growth,” as one attendee put it.

“I don’t see how we get there,” one CEO told Gasparino of that lofty ambition. “His people are worried as well, particularly about affordability, but they won’t tell him. He’s surrounded by a lot of yes men.”

Since last week’s election results, either Trump or administration officials have publicly floated a series of ideas meant to boost Americans’ financial standing — including a $2,000 “tariff dividend,” which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested this week would go to households making under $100,000 per year.

However, many conservative economists warn that idea is reminiscent of the Biden administration’s stimulus payments under the American Rescue Plan — which are widely blamed for causing inflation to jump to 40-year highs by June 2022 — and say that any tariff revenue should be used to pay down the federal deficit.

Late Thursday, the White House announced framework trade deals with five countries — Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala and Switzerland — that Bessent had suggested would reduce the cost of kitchen staples like beef, coffee and bananas.

In a Wednesday morning appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Bessent told co-host Brian Kilmeade that Americans would “very quickly” see prices come down on “things we don’t grow here in the United States. You know, coffee being one of them. You know, bananas, other fruits, things like that.”

The subsequent framework announcements drew sardonic comments Friday from critics of the president’s much-loved tariffs.

“So, the administration that said all year that their tariffs don’t affect US consumer prices – and mocked anyone who disagreed – NOW says that cutting those same tariffs will spur consumer savings?” tweeted Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“Comical stuff. Just comical.”