At one polling place after another in Broward and Palm Beach counties last week, a consistent theme resonated among voters: They were there to express their anger at a Biden administration that failed to keep prices under control and presided over inflation levels that at one point two years ago reached 9%, the highest level in roughly four decades.

A return to former President Donald Trump, they said, would help make their cost-burdened households become more manageable.

It didn’t matter that the stock market boomed and that unemployment had fallen to a manageable 4.1% nationally after the labor market nearly suffocated under double-digit numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The rate is even better in South Florida, where joblessness has hovered around the 3% range and job creation consistently has risen statewide for multiple months. Inflation, meanwhile, is back to within a range that has prompted renewed interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

But voter memories are focused on Trump’s first term, when inflation was nowhere near the 9% high reached in 2022 under President Joe Biden.

“Obviously, during the Trump years, the economy was great,” said Brendan Doyle, 24, who works for a business financing firm in Boca Raton. “A lot of people were taking out money to grow and expand their businesses. People’s livelihoods were just overall better. Over the last four years, everything changed. I’ve been seeing a lot of my old clients have to close down shop, file bankruptcy, and all that stuff.”

Florida supporters like Doyle expect the president re-elect will help ease the pain of the higher cost of living. But can the second-term president slow the upward price momentum in housing, healthcare and energy?

What Trump can do

Two Florida economists at major state universities raised caution flags about what the newly reelected president will do as he seeks to fulfill campaign promises that he’ll ease the financial pressures on American households and individual consumers.

From the Oval Office, Trump can implement a number of measures with the stroke of a pen. But he can’t unilaterally cut general borrowing costs, a job that belongs to the Federal Reserve. And although the Republican Party appears to be headed for a governing trifecta of controlling the House, Senate and White House, there’s no guarantee that lawmakers will march in lockstep with all of his ideas to help consumers whipsawed by higher prices and taxes

“If you look back to his first administration, some of the things he did, like tax cuts and regulatory reforms, appear to have benefitted those below the great divide” between rich and poor, said William Luther, an economist and associate professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.

“On the tax front, relatively low-income working-class Americans benefited from those tax cuts,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t introduce new tax cuts that wouldn’t have the same effects.”

Sean Snaith, director of the Institute of Economic Forecasting at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, said Trump could reopen energy production sources that were shut down by Biden.

“Based on his first term, I think he could enact production domestically which would help top-line inflation,” Snaith said. “Beyond that, the various tax cuts and so forth … you can only do so much. He has to have (the House) and the Senate working together, and that didn’t happen in the first term.”

Inflation

The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee on Thursday unanimously cut its benchmark overnight borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point to a targeted range of 4.5% to 4.75%. The reason: Its support of employment is as important as curbing inflation.

Snaith worries it was a cut too far.

“The Fed doesn’t control mortgage rates, that’s the bottom line,” he said. “We’ve seen longer-term Treasury rates and mortgage rates go up since September. That’s why I was against the Fed cutting. The economy is not teetering on the brink of a recession. I don’t know what this rush to a cut was all about.”

Then there‘s the “elephant in the room,” the $37.8 trillion national debt.

“The interest payments on that debt have hit $1 trillion a year. We’ve kicked that can down the road as far as we can, and now we’re in a cul-de-sac.”

It remains unclear what Trump or Congress will do to cut the debt.

“Many people haven’t had the bitter taste of inflation in their mouths, going into the grocery store paying $200 and not even needing a cart to carry the bags you have,” Snaith said.

Rents, utilities and “all of these basic things” have been on the rise, a fact that “swayed a lot of decisions on Tuesday,” he added.

Interest rates

Prospective homebuyers are still feeling the pinch of loftier mortgage rates, which had been declining in recent weeks below 7%. But they’re on the rise again, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Mortgage payment delinquencies “have inched up over the past year,” according to an association official, with Florida among five states that have seen increases.

Doyle, the Boca Raton financial professional, said in a follow-up interview Thursday that he was stunned to receive a quote of 9% for a 30-year fixed mortgage to finance a home he wants to buy.

He said he’s since been preapproved for a rate of 6.9%.

Housing

Since well before COVID-19, Florida’s population growth has been largely fueled by relocating businesses from other regions of the U.S. The upside is higher-wage jobs. But there’s been a downside, economists said, as home prices have gone up.

Craig Studnicky, founder and CEO of the Miami-based ISG World  brokerage, said he voted for Trump because of the likelihood he’d trigger a reduction in rates.

“The real estate industry has been benign for too long,” he said. “Very few houses are getting built because of high interest rates. Kamala Harris was not talking about the real estate industry the way Trump was.”

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the  “The Great Florida Migration Is Coming Undone” amid a housing inventory surplus, declining buyer interest and violent weather.

“We’ll see what actually happens,” Studnicky said. “(Trump) will lower rates for political and business reasons and get the housing industry away from recession levels to more normal levels. When you consider housing starts, it’s like recession levels.

“I’ve been doing this for 45 years,” Studnicky added. “Every time mortgage rates go down, sales go up. I am grounded in some optimism as a real estate broker.”

One silver lining is the growing number of public-private affordable housing programs around South Florida that will allow more workers to live closer to their places of employment.

Broward County and the Related Group, for example, are in a partnership to build a Fort Lauderdale project with a majority of its apartments aimed at residents who earn at or below the region’s median income.

In fact, it was the lower-cost shared-living community called Society Las Olas in downtown Fort Lauderdale that allowed Kassie Meiler to start a boutique social media firm called Goat Social Media.

Meiler declined to discuss politics or say how she voted Tuesday. But she noted her initial rent in 2020 was $1,850. She has since bought a condo in Flagler Village, a decision triggered in 2022 by rising rent; her office is in the shared workspace General Provision downtown.

She acknowledged her labor and software costs have risen, and in turns, so have her charges for clients.

“Definitely inflation hits everywhere,” she said.

Tariffs

While Trump is hailed by many voters as the man who would make life more affordable, his declarations that he’d impose 10% levies on all imports and up to 60% on inbound Chinese goods worry economists who say consumers will bear the brunt of those increases.

According to Bankrate, the personal finance site, investors expect continued high deficit spending by the federal government during Trump’s second term. Coupled with more tax cuts, consumers could be facing another inflationary surge.

“This is not a grand era for the notion of fiscal responsibility,” Bankrate managing editor Mark Hamrick said in an interview. “You could probably use a rather small room in Washington, D.C., to house elected officials who are advocating on its behalf.”

Consumer debt: A warning?

Consumers, meanwhile, have deficit problems of their own with their cumulative credit card debt having hit a trillion dollars over the last year.

Despite the pain of carrying balances at 20% interest, many are still willing to spend on vacations and other extras beyond basic household expenses. 

One indicator: Trips from South Florida’s two main cruise sea ports — Port Everglades in Broward County and PortMiami — are again setting records.

Port Everglades, which is a port-of-call for mainly luxury cruise ships, reported last week that it “bested its own cruise passenger record with a preliminary count of 4,010,919 guests embarking and disembarking during Fiscal Year 2024, which ended September 30. An even higher number of 4.4 million is expected next year.

“Cruising is in high demand, and our cruise line partners are poised for greater gains with new itineraries and a variety of sailing dates,”  CEO and Port Director Joseph Morris said in a statement.

But some passengers aren’t paying for their cruises upfront — they’re financing the trips over time, meaning their seaborne vacations won’t be fully paid for until well after their ships return to port.

Fort Lauderdale bankruptcy lawyer Chad Van Horn said he heard from one client who wanted to delay a personal bankruptcy filing until January so she and others could take a cruise they’d paid for through a financing plan.

Other companies are encouraging financed purchases, adding to the trillion dollars in credit card debt on the books nationally.

“Bankruptcies are up significantly,” Van Horn said. “We just had a record month last month with 1,550 filed just from our office. I think there will be a bigger story soon about bankruptcy filings. We’re teetering on a cliff.”

Reporter Lauren Blanton of MediaLab@FAU contributed to this report.