Voters Punished the GOP Over Costs; Three Charts Show the Affordability Test Democrats Now Inherit, Fox News Reports
Fox News says inflation was 3.7 percent through September, diesel hit $6.53 in October and mortgage rates average 7.24 percent. Experts say a Democratic Congress has limited power to roll back tariffs on its own.
Fox News used three charts to lay out the cost pressures behind the midterm vote and the problem the new Democratic majority takes over in January. The report was first published Tuesday and updated Wednesday afternoon.
Everyday prices. Consumer prices rose 3.7 percent over the year through September and 0.6 percent from August. A New York Federal Reserve study found tariffs added about 2.9 percentage points to prices across the consumer goods researchers looked at. About a third of that came from U.S.-made products, whose makers faced higher costs for imported materials and parts. Fox notes the figures show the pressure voters felt, not who they blamed.
Why Lincicome says it hurt. Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute told Fox News Digital: "When you campaign on lowering prices, and then you actually actively increase prices, it's probably gonna hurt when voters go back to the polls and are mad about prices still being too high."
Tariffs and Congress. Pierre Yared of the Council on Foreign Relations, a former acting chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote Wednesday that because Congress already delegated tariff authority to the president, a change in control "is unlikely on their own to change the administration's tariff policy." To override a veto of a bill limiting those powers, Congress would need two-thirds in both chambers. Democrats won both chambers but fell short of that.
Fuel. Wars in Iran and Ukraine have disrupted fuel supplies. Diesel rose from about $3.45 a gallon in early 2025 to a peak of $6.53 in October 2026, per the Energy Information Administration. Gasoline jumped 9.1 percent in September, more than half of that month's overall rise in the consumer price index. Lincicome called it a "double whammy": tariffs, then energy prices from the Iran war.
Housing. Freddie Mac's 30-year mortgage rate averaged 7.24 percent as of Oct. 29, and the median existing home price reached $417,500 in September, per the National Association of Realtors. Jim Tobin of the National Association of Home Builders said higher diesel costs put "a little bit of pressure on homebuilding in the short term."
What we could not check. We did not see the charts themselves, and we have not checked the figures against the original agencies.