Senior White House aide: Americans will feel better about the economy in early 2026

White House deputy chief of staff James Blair on Wednesday predicted US voters would start to feel better about their finances next year as the Trump administration gets out of the “hole” left by former President Joe Biden.

“The fundamentals of the economy are good… what people are expressing is mostly about affordability,” Blair told Semafor’s Shelby Talcott at the Architects of the New Economy event.

Blair’s comments come as President Donald Trump and his party face signs of mounting voter discontent with the economy that have taken a toll on his approval rating. Trump appeared at a Pennsylvania rally on Tuesday night as part of what’s been billed as a travel swing addressing voter concerns, though he used the opportunity to jeer at affordability as a “hoax.”

Looking ahead to the 2026 tax filing season, when voters will start to see the effects of the GOP party-line tax law, Blair said that Americans will “see a lot of relief” from persistently high prices. He said “things are going in the right direction,” crediting the administration with rebuilding after inflation spiked under Biden.

Blair also suggested that Trump would ramp up his push for Congress to pass legislation giving many Americans direct rebate payments from his tariff regime — an idea that many Republicans are skeptical about. And he kept the door open to another party-line reconciliation bill in Congress, an idea that Trump appeared to cast doubt on earlier Wednesday.

“As we turn into the year, we’re open to another reconciliation bill,” Blair said, adding a suggestion that Trump wanted to work with Democrats more directly: “That’s really a partisan tool, and there’s bipartisan pathways too.”

Asked about health care, he also suggested the president — who refused to negotiate with Democrats on rising premiums during this fall’s government shutdown — would be open to cutting a deal with the opposing party. He criticized their test vote in the Senate this week on a three-year extension of expiring enhanced Obamacare credits, however, as a sign that Democrats are not serious about a bipartisan health care deal.

“They have our phone numbers,” Blair said of Democrats and their aides, and “we await any meaningful engagement.”

Notably, he declined to rule out the ultimate release of a White House plan for the expiring health care credits — and one that extends the expiring subsidies, albeit with changes.

“We’re not interested in managed failure,” Blair said.