Is it possible that inflation will be the big issue in 2026?

Inflation was certainly a big issue in 2024, and it played against the Democrats. Might inflation now play against the Republicans?

I’m thinking primarily of the price of essentials: food and electricity. I suspect that the price of food will go up noticeably between now and the middle of next year. The Trump administration is deporting people left and right. Many of those people are farmworkers. If you get rid of a lot of farmworkers, one of two things happens: Either vegetables rot in the fields or farmers pay more to attract employees to harvest the crop.

If vegetables are unnecessarily rotting, prices are going up. If farmers are paying more to harvest the crop, prices are going up.

Inflation.

At the same time, Trump is imposing massive tariffs on food that we import from other countries. Trump is, for example, charging about a 17% tariff on Mexican tomatoes. He’s imposing a 50% tariff on beef from Brazil. He’s even imposed a 15% tariff on French wines, although, in less trying times, wine is not quite as essential as tomatoes and beef.

These tariffs are foolish — we’re not protecting essential American industries by raising the price of food — but that’s not my point. The combination of deporting the farm workforce and imposing tariffs on imported food is basically guaranteed to inflate grocery prices over the coming six months.

Couple that with a likely increase in electricity prices. Demand for energy is skyrocketing. Training artificial intelligence models requires running thousands of processors to perform complex computations for weeks or months. This massive demand for electricity is already straining the grid, and the boom in artificial intelligence is just starting. The Trump administration is simultaneously doing everything possible to strangle new sources of energy. Trump has suspended issuing permits for wind and solar projects on public land. He’s eliminated investment tax credits that previously supported alternative energy sources. And the Interior Department now engages in burdensome, multilevel reviews of new alternative energy projects, delaying the approval process.

You can “drill, baby, drill” as much as you like, but it’s hard to replace the renewable energy sources that have accounted for much of the recent growth in electric-generating capacity.

If I’m right, and the cost of both food and electricity is about to increase, won’t this become a political issue? And shouldn’t Democrats be delighted?

After all, Trump made the price of eggs a huge issue in the 2024 campaign, proposed no policies that might actually reduce those prices, and won office. Democrats could note the increased cost of essentials and actually propose policies that would change things — eliminate tariffs on food (at least), restore sanity to the deportation process, and revive government support for renewable energy.

That is, quite literally, a kitchen-table issue. It should play with all but the very rich, who are basically immune to price increases. Perfect!

But Democrats must then avoid alienating swing voters who probably disagree with the far left on social issues. Don’t insist, as Democrats did during the primaries in 2020, that America should essentially have open borders. Instead, agree with Republicans that a country must control its borders and criticize only the way in which Trump has gone about deporting innocent multitudes without due process. Don’t insist that boys who have passed puberty should be allowed to transition and then compete in girls’ sports. Instead, explain that we should not discriminate against anyone but, for reasons of fairness, we simply cannot permit biological males to compete against biological females. In this situation, we must discriminate against either women or trans women, depending on what we decide. On this one issue, trans women lose. Don’t insist, as Democrats did in 2020, that we should defund the police. People don’t like crime; talk about ways to improve, rather than starve, law enforcement.

If economics holds true, food (and energy) prices should be shooting up like a cornstalk next summer. Democrats should focus on that nonpartisan pocketbook issue in an effort to win back the House of Representatives.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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