Why does Jonathan Chait say populism had no answer to Joe Biden's inflation problem?

Jonathan Chait says Joe Biden adopted a quieter populism by keeping Trump's tariffs on trade, but inflation became the defining economic challenge of his presidency. Populist tools offer little against rising prices, and some, tariffs in particular, make inflation worse. Biden was slow to recognize the problem and could not bring prices down quickly enough to steady his administration.

• Biden kept the tariffs without adopting Trump's rhetoric about evil free-trade elites.
• Chait names tariffs as a key example of a populist policy that pushes prices up.

▸In their words

“Populists don't really have a lot of policies that are an answer to inflation.” Jonathan Chait · at 10:05 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Today, Explained (2026-11-03). Read the whole episode summary →

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