LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump opened his State of the Union address by declaring a golden age of America.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It is indeed a turnaround for the ages.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
That is not how many voters see things. Trump used the opportunity to defend his tariff policy, recently struck down by the Supreme Court, and celebrate last year's Republican tax cuts.
FADEL: He also made familiar attacks on immigrants, and later, Democrats.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
TRUMP: These people are crazy, I'm telling you.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Vocalizing).
TRUMP: They're crazy.
MARTÍNEZ: In a few minutes, we'll hear about what might be next for the administration's immigration enforcement policies and the use of the military abroad. We start, though, with NPR's Scott Horsley, who was focusing on Trump's message about the economy.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: The president talked as if he had inherited a stagnant economy with record high inflation from the Democrats.
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TRUMP: Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them. We are doing really well. Those prices are plummeting downward.
HORSLEY: Trump is trying to paint himself as some sort of turnaround artist here, but this just does not comport with the facts. Inflation has mostly moved sideways under President Trump, and in fact, his tariff policies pushed prices higher in some cases. GDP growth has actually slowed a little bit from the last year of the Biden administration, although it was pretty respectable at 2.2% last year. And then, of course, job growth has been much slower under this president than it was under his predecessor.
MARTÍNEZ: Did he present any new economic policies?
HORSLEY: He did. He talked about how half of all working Americans don't have a retirement plan right now where their bosses can contribute to match what they put in. So he says he wants to come up with a new type of plan.
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TRUMP: To remedy this gross disparity, I'm announcing that next year, my administration will give these often forgotten American workers - great people. The people that built our country - access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker. We will match your contribution with up to $1,000 each year.
HORSLEY: Now, of course, that would take help from Congress, and he didn't talk about where the money would come from. Trump also doubled down on his tariff policies just days after the Supreme Court had struck down about half of his import levies. Of course, he did so with some of the justices who ruled against him in that case sitting right in front of him.
He also said that even with some of those tariffs now outlawed, the trade deals with other countries that he managed to negotiate using those tariffs aren't going anywhere because, he says, those countries are afraid of getting an even worse deal later.
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TRUMP: 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.
HORSLEY: The Scott the president's talking to there is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. We have actually yet to see a lot of dividends from those trade deals. U.S. exports were up only marginally last year. Farm exports were down, and the overall trade deficit barely budged from 2024.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And, Scott, I know that he is not a big fan of the word affordability. Did he say anything about affordability in the State of the Union?
HORSLEY: He did. He listed a few items where prices have come down - notably eggs and gasoline. He didn't dwell on things that have gotten more expensive, like natural gas and electricity. One of the things that's driving high electricity prices these days is increased demand from data centers. And Trump did say he has a plan to make tech companies building all those data centers cover the cost of that power so it's not borne by local ratepayers. He called that the ratepayer protection pledge.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
TRUMP: We're telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs. They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one's prices will go up, and in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down
HORSLEY: Now, he was short on specifics, but this does address a real political liability. Electricity prices were up more than 6% in the last year - more than double the overall rate of inflation.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Scott Horsley. Scott, thanks a lot.
HORSLEY: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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