Hey Kevin, do you have a second to chat with us?
Yeah, I have. Just a second.
Okay, great. Thank you.
It's my second one of the day.
I know I appreciate your generosity on this. We missed the morning one, so we just wanted to catch up with you.
Okay.
I have one quick one. The White House is telling us the president wants to take his economic message on the road. What more can you tell us about that and what do you say to those Americans that may think that sounds like what President Biden did with his Bidenomics message on the road?
Well, Trumponomics works and Bidenomics doesn't. And so we've got lots of good news to report to the American people. And I think that people also could just look at their wallets and see that real incomes this year have already gone up by $1,200. And so the affordability gap that was created by Biden's runaway inflation is gradually being whittled away by the higher growth that we have and the no tax on tips and no tax on overtime and so on. And so President Trump for sure is going to go out there and deliver the message.
But in the end, the most important message is going to be what people see in their pockets, which is higher incomes and basically a higher ability to spend.
Kevin, how are you reading the markets' movement today? Are you concerned?
You never know really why markets move, but the story of today is that it's because markets are thinking that the Fed is less likely to cut rates. If you look at the Federal fund's futures, they are quite a bit lower today, and I think that that's because of some of the speeches that we've been reading from Federal Reserve officials.
But I would just remind that, based on fundamentals, the two things that changed since the last meeting, or second to last meeting, are that we had a shutdown that lowered estimates to GDP by 1 to 1.5%, and we had inflation numbers that were much lower than expected. And so the fact that the Fed would move from a posture of three rate cuts to two, after getting news that really says the opposite, makes you really wonder what they're thinking over there.
Do you think the administration is going to call for a rate cut? Should we expect to see the president call for that again?
The president will say what the president wants to say, I'm sure.
Kevin, how do you interpret the recent election results, where you had the Democratic sweep and a lot of voters had cited unhappiness about the way they feel about the economy and how the administration has been handling it?
Well, again, I think that if you look at a person, the typical American, who, when President Trump left office, would spend $400 a month on their groceries, having to spend about $515 on their groceries after the Biden administration's four-year run, then we've reduced inflation dramatically. But the difference between 400 and 515 is still a real hardship for the American people.
And so we're working overtime on reducing costs, both at the micro level, with our efforts on eggs, you remember, and meat. But at the macro level too, we've reduced the deficit so far this year by 300 something billion dollars already in this calendar year. And that gives you a much lower impulse for inflation at the macroeconomic side too.
So we're doing everything we can to fix it. But I can understand why people are still frustrated, because with 5% inflation year after year under Joe Biden, there was a massive hole that was dug by their policies that we're filling in right now.
And so what would you say to Americans who are continuing to feel the pinch? And for small businesses, who are also feeling the effect of some of the whiplash with the tariffs?
That we're making up ground fast. We're making up ground fast. Thank you, guys.
Thank you.