For a president who sold himself as the ultimate negotiator, Donald Trump is sure spending a staggering amount of public money to prove how little negotiating he intends to do. This week’s decision to dispatch 4,700 uniformed personnel into Los Angeles at a cost of $134 million—and to bankroll a $45 million armored birthday spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue—says less about restoring order or celebrating national pride and far more about a White House that mistakes fireworks for fundamentals. Inflation, allegedly Enemy No. 1 on Day 1 of the Trump restoration, now competes for attention with tanks and troop carriers. The grocery aisle can wait, apparently, while the commander-in-chief stages his own high-budget sequel to “The Apprentice.”
The disconnect is so glaring it borders on performance art. Prices at the checkout lane are a daily referendum on presidential promises; they require boring, incremental work: supply-chain agreements, regulatory clarity, credible fiscal signals. Instead we get muscle-flexing against protesters in L.A. and an extravagant parade timed to a birthday cake. For the shopper deciding whether to skip fresh produce this week, the administration’s message is painfully clear: symbolism first, savings later. In fact, the two objectives collide. Pulling thousands of Guard members from their civilian jobs for a 60-day deployment disrupts local labor markets, nudges logistics costs higher, and siphons dollars that might have been used for port modernization or freight subsidies—the unglamorous levers that actually nudge down the cost of milk.
Trump’s supporters will call this “psychological economics,” the theory that if suppliers witness presidential resolve on unrelated fronts they will spontaneously lower prices out of patriotic duty. That logic flatters the base but insults the balance sheet. A cereal manufacturer does not slash margins because Abrams tanks are rumbling down Constitution Avenue; a grocer does not eat higher wholesale costs because a Marine battalion just flew over Dodger Stadium. Markets respond to costs and certainty. The White House this week supplied plenty of costs and almost no certainty.
There is, of course, a political arithmetic at play. Washington pageantry broadcasts strength; an urban deployment stokes culture-war adrenaline; both drown out the inconvenient arithmetic of CPI reports. If the parade cameras linger on military hardware rather than on year-over-year food inflation, the administration chalks it up as a communications victory. Yet even the most loyal MAGA acolyte pays rent in dollars, not slogans. By August, when those 60 days in L.A. expire, the public will tally not only the bill for troop housing and fuel but also any lingering uptick in avocado prices. The risk for Trump is that spectacle fatigue sets in faster than inflation recedes.
Meanwhile, governors, mayors, and grocers are left navigating a policy fog. Are tariffs set to rise next quarter? Will federal transportation grants be re-scored to offset parade overtime? When executives cannot see the fiscal road ahead, they price in risk. Risk, in turn, is born by consumers—precisely the voters Trump vowed to shield. The unintended irony is stark: a president deploying soldiers to quell economic anxiety may end up stoking the very inflation he promised to slay.
America has always celebrated its military, and no one begrudges troops a public salute. But patriotism is not measured in decimal points of explosive yield or parade route length; it is measured in the quiet confidence that ordinary families can afford dinner without sacrificing dignity. If this administration wants a genuine victory lap, it should reroute that $179 million toward the mundane machinery of affordability: port cranes, rail upgrades, competitive freight insurance, maybe even a bipartisan grocery task force. Tanks make thunder, but forklifts move food. Until Trump grasps that distinction, the only prices dropping will be his approval numbers, not the ones on the shelf.
