CNBC Panel Blames Former President For The Affordability Crisis Facing Americans

It looks like someone’s finally saying the quiet part out loud. On CNBC, no less. Wednesday morning’s Squawk Box didn’t pull any punches when host Joe Kernen and former SEC Chair Jay Clayton decided to go full reality check on President Biden’s disastrous economic legacy. And by “legacy,” we mean the smoldering crater that was left behind for President Trump and his economic team to clean up.

Let’s be honest here. You don’t need a Wall Street pedigree to feel what’s been going on the past few years — just take a stroll down the grocery aisle, try to fill up your gas tank without taking out a second mortgage, or check the sticker price on a basic new car and try not to wince. What Kernen made crystal clear — and what millions of Americans have been living through — is that the so-called “affordability crisis” isn’t just some abstract economic concept. It’s real, it’s painful, and it has Bidenomics written all over it in bold, red ink.

Kernen laid it out plainly: we’re dealing with a 22% spike in prices and inflation under Biden. Full stop. That’s not spin, that’s math. And while the corporate media spent four years calling President Trump a danger to the economy, they went awfully quiet when Biden started printing money like it was Monopoly night and tossing it out like candy at a Labor Day parade.

Enter Jay Clayton, who didn’t hesitate to pile on. He said what many of us already knew: when Trump and his economic team, now led by Scott Bessent, walked back into the White House in January, they inherited the worst economy for the average American in a generation. Think about that for a second — worse than post-9/11, worse than the Great Recession, worse than COVID. Because this wasn’t just a downturn — it was a man-made mess, built brick by brick from bad policy, worse regulation, and an all-out war on American energy.

And let’s not forget how we got here. Remember the Biden obsession with “green” energy? The electric vehicle mandates that priced working families out of the market? The push to strangle the fossil fuel industry while pretending solar panels would keep your heat on in the winter? All of that — all of it — drove costs higher while delivering absolutely nothing for the average American except maybe a smug NPR segment and a higher electric bill.

But now, under Trump 2.0, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Energy prices are coming down. Gas is more affordable. The infamous Obama-era CAFE standards that drove up car prices? Rolled back. Kevin Hassett, one of the administration’s top economic voices, says that move alone could drop car prices by $1,000 to $2,000. That’s real savings — not the fuzzy math Biden’s team tried to peddle every time they claimed inflation was “transitory.”