There are few circumstances under which inflation can be comforting. But in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential election, one of them appears to be when it serves as an alibi for an electorate’s sharp turn toward meanness, selfishness, and a hard-edged type of identity-centered nationalism.

Many Americans have used inflation to explain away the country’s embrace of radical political change. Yet this ignores basic facts about the U.S. economy. Before the election, I wrote a column highlighting some of these remarkable statistics, noting that the country has recently far outpaced its G-7 peers in economic growth and brought unemployment down to nearly historic lows; that inflation, after briefly surpassing 9 percent in 2022, has plunged to 2.6 percent; and that gasoline prices, one of the most important pocketbook issues for Americans, are relatively low.

There are few circumstances under which inflation can be comforting. But in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential election, one of them appears to be when it serves as an alibi for an electorate’s sharp turn toward meanness, selfishness, and a hard-edged type of identity-centered nationalism.

Many Americans have used inflation to explain away the country’s embrace of radical political change. Yet this ignores basic facts about the U.S. economy. Before the election, I wrote a column highlighting some of these remarkable statistics, noting that the country has recently far outpaced its G-7 peers in economic growth and brought unemployment down to nearly historic lows; that inflation, after briefly surpassing 9 percent in 2022, has plunged to 2.6 percent; and that gasoline prices, one of the most important pocketbook issues for Americans, are relatively low.

Even George F. Will, a dean of conservative columnists in Washington, indirectly laid bare the ridiculousness of this explanation. As he wrote this week, Trump “ran promising to increase living costs” due to the large tariffs he has vowed to impose on imports.

But to fully understand why the inflation explanation doesn’t add up, one must examine the broader nature of Trump’s program—specifically, its retrograde racial politics. After all, Trump was explicit........

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