By Phil Huber, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
President Trump says the economy is good. His advisers cite growth and other encouraging numbers, then suggest Americans have not fully appreciated the good news. President Biden made a similar mistake. Biden spoke of jobs, wages and falling inflation while families faced higher grocery bills, rents, insurance premiums and credit-card balances.
Voters in both cases were asking for economic respite. They did not want a lecture about statistics. They wanted relief at the grocery checkout, the gas pump, the pharmacy counter and the kitchen table. Inflation slowing does not mean prices have returned to where they were. Families live on paychecks, bills and what remains after both.
I spent years in the military and federal service, where I learned that leaders do not earn trust by telling people a problem is not a problem. They earn it by stating the facts, acknowledging the cost of a decision and accepting responsibility for the result. Presidents do not control every price. Global markets, weather, corporate decisions, supply chains and Federal Reserve policy all matter. But presidents make choices, and choices have consequences.
Biden’s choices must be judged in the context of COVID. The pandemic shut down businesses, disrupted global supply chains and threatened millions with lost jobs, bankruptcies and financial ruin. Emergency aid kept households and businesses afloat, but it also added demand when production and supply could not keep up. That tradeoff helped fuel inflation. It was not cost-free—but neither was allowing an economic collapse.
Trump inherited those higher price levels. But inheritance is not a lifetime exemption from accountability. He now owns the consequences of his own decisions, especially broad tariffs and a costly conflict with Iran.
Targeted tariffs can sometimes respond to genuine unfair trade practices or protect industries essential to national security. But Trump’s 2025 program was not limited to China’s subsidies, intellectual-property theft or strategic overcapacity. His April order imposed a 10 percent baseline tariff on imports from all countries, with higher rates for countries with which the United States had the largest goods trade deficits. A trade deficit is not, by itself, proof that another country cheated. Americans buy products from around the world because they are affordable, well-made, available and often not produced here in enough quantity.
The Supreme Court held in February that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not authorize the president to impose the challenged tariffs. It said a president cannot use a broad emergency-powers law as a substitute for congressional authority. If sweeping tariffs are necessary, the administration should make that case to Congress, defend the consumer costs and accept a public vote. A subsequent court order directed refunds to the importers that paid the unlawful tariffs—not to the shoppers who may have absorbed those costs through higher prices. Returning money to an importer does not automatically put money back into a family’s grocery or appliance budget.
As a retired Army Reserve colonel, I do not treat the use of military force as a casual political talking point. Iran is not an innocent actor. Its support for armed proxies, threats to Israel and regional stability, and nuclear program are serious concerns. But serious concern is not the same as an imminent threat to the United States, and it is not a blank check for an open-ended American war without congressional authorization.
President Trump and his administration have repeatedly said they acted because Iran posed an imminent threat to America. Trump said the purpose of the operation was to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” The Department of War likewise said Operation Epic Fury targeted locations posing an imminent threat.
But “imminent” is not a campaign slogan. It has a meaning. It requires more than hostility, dangerous missiles, uranium enrichment, support for proxies or the possibility that Iran might become more dangerous in the future. It requires a specific, near-term threat for which waiting to consult Congress would put Americans at greater risk.
The administration should identify that threat. Was it a planned Iranian attack on the United States? On deployed American troops? On bases, ships, embassies or civilians? What intelligence established the threat’s timing and scale? Why was a sustained war necessary rather than a limited defensive response? And why was Congress not asked to authorize the conflict? The explanation has not remained consistent. The president emphasized an imminent Iranian threat; other officials have pointed to nuclear ambitions, conventional missiles, proxy networks and anticipated Iranian retaliation after an Israeli strike. Those may all be serious concerns. They are not interchangeable explanations for a war.
The present nuclear danger did not arise in a vacuum. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear agreement, which limited Iran’s uranium stockpile and enrichment to 3.67 percent while requiring extensive international monitoring. Iran initially remained within key limits after the U.S. withdrawal, but it later exceeded them as the agreement unraveled. The United States did not obtain a stronger agreement. It got less visibility, less leverage and an Iran enriching uranium at far higher levels.
The ongoing conflict has a price. The Associated Press reported that U.S. Central Command estimated military costs at $43.6 billion as of Sept. 3, while a Congressional Budget Office estimate cited by AP put continuing costs at roughly $3 billion per month, depending on the conflict’s intensity. Conflict in the Middle East also increases energy-market risk. Higher oil prices raise the cost of gasoline and diesel, and diesel costs flow through trucks, farms, construction and delivery networks into family budgets.
National security cannot be reduced to the price of a gallon of gasoline. But neither can it be used to avoid serious debate. If force is necessary, the president must explain the threat, the mission, the likely duration, the alternatives, the cost and the definition of success. Candidate Trump warned against wars of choice, vague missions and Washington’s easy promises that military action would be quick and cheap. That standard should still apply.
Congress does not get to sit quietly in the gallery. It holds the constitutional powers over tariffs, war and appropriations. It should decide openly whether broad import taxes are worth their consumer costs. It should debate and authorize—or reject—continued hostilities with Iran, demand regular cost estimates, and insist on a clear mission and an exit strategy.
These are not partisan questions. Democrats were wrong to talk past families living with Biden-era inflation. Republicans are wrong to dismiss the added costs and constitutional shortcuts of Trump’s policies. Americans deserve leaders who count the costs before acting, not after—and who tell the truth when voters say they need relief. The country does not need happier slogans. It needs honest accounting.
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Phil Huber is a retired Army Reserve colonel and former federal civil servant who writes about civic education, public accountability and national security. He lives in Fredericksburg.
