The real numbers tell a different story as 2025 crawls to a close.
When historians search for a metaphor to describe the economy in 2025, they may call it the year of the wrecking ball. Demolition crews were busy reducing part of the White House to rubble to make way for President Donald Trump’s gilded ballroom even as Wisconsin witnessed high prices, a slumping job market, farmers enduring a second Trump trade war, and a looming spike in the number of families fearfully planning to gamble on a year without health insurance.
A national post-pandemic recovery that was the envy of the world came to a screeching halt in 2025, as Trump and congressional Republicans took steps to end programs that were creating clean energy jobs in Wisconsin, preventing struggling families from going hungry, and providing stable healthcare coverage for small business employees who don’t get insurance through their jobs.
Despite cratering poll numbers that show 67% of Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy, Trump didn’t hesitate when asked to rate his own performance in the first year of his second term.
“A+++++,” he said, repeating false claims that he had inherited one of the worst economies in history. Earlier, Trump dismissed Americans’ concerns about affordability as a “Democrat hoax.”
“Trump promised to lower costs for Wisconsin families on Day One, but he’s done the opposite,” said Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee. “Trump has spent his first year wining and dining CEOs and billionaires while skyrocketing costs, killing jobs, steering our economy toward recession, and kicking millions of Americans off their health care.”
Martin noted a slew of statistics that put the perilous state of the Wisconsin economy into perspective.
Using the same data source and methods Republicans used last year, Democrats pointed out that the average Wisconsin family has paid $671 more in 2025 for the same goods and services that were purchased in 2024 — despite Trump promising inflation would be in “FULL RETREAT” by August.
The median-income Wisconsin family will lose a combined $1,060 per year from Trump’s trade war tariffs and the effects of the megabill that have made massive cuts to federal programs.
Wisconsin’s 271,589 enrollees in Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance plans are losing their enhanced tax credits — to that end, a 60-year-old Badger making around $63,000 will see monthly premiums increase by an average of 192%.
Many will no longer be able to afford coverage through the ACA or due to cuts in Medicaid (and the impact on Medicare), leading to an estimated 110,000 in the state becoming uninsured and at risk of driving healthcare costs up for everyone.
And for working families whose incomes are low enough to qualify for food assistance, cuts to SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps) will cause 375,000 Wisconsin families to lose some or all of their benefits.
“As Trump has his fun with gilded ballrooms and Great Gatsby parties while ignoring everybody else,” Martin said, “Wisconsin families know Democrats will keep fighting on their behalf every day to lower costs and improve lives.”
