Former President Donald Trump and his newly selected running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, got all the attention Monday on the opening night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. But the official theme for the evening was the economy something that Republicans hope to keep making a focus of the campaign.

The prime-time hours included a video and some speeches highlighting the real-life effects of high consumer prices. Among the speakers was Sara Workman , who identified herself as a single mother in Arizona working two jobs to support her family. I know that Americans can relate when I say that every time I fill up my gas tank, go to the grocery store and try to pay the bills, I think, Who doesnt miss the Trump days? she said.

You can see why she and others feel this way. For the first two years of Joe Bidens presidency, prices rose at rates not seen in decades, with year-over-year inflation eventually peaking near 10% in the middle of 2022. If you didnt notice it at the supermarket, then you might have seen it at the pump, when gas prices nationally hit nearly $5 a gallon.

Since then, inflation has actually come back down . Most analysts believe the driving forces behind the price spikes were global factors like supply chain issues during the pandemic issues that, under Biden, the U.S. handled better than most peer countries. Unemployment reached historic lows last year, and now it looks like wages (measuring from before the pandemic) have risen even faster than prices.

Surveys bear this out: Most Americans think their personal financial situation is good . Even so, their economic outlook remains glum . It could be that high borrowing costs have downstream effects on housing, or that higher prices have a notoriously big psychological effect . It could be that media coverage and peoples own partisan leanings reinforce negative perceptions. It could be all of those factors.

Whatever the explanation, its been a winning issue for Trump.

But if you were paying attention Friday, you may have noticed something missing from the convention speeches: details about what policy levers Trump and the Republicans plan to pull in response. And although that kind of silence befits a nominee who famously prefers that his advisers keep policy briefings to a single page , it belies an agenda of tariffs and tax cuts raising alarms from a loud, politically diverse chorus of economists.

The economy will be significantly weaker if Mr. Trumps economic proposals are adopted, a June report from Moodys Analytics predicted. That report came one month after an analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics offered an even more dire assessment that Trumps plans would inflict massive collateral damage on the US economy.