Tariffs and the Iran war drive up prices; Trump loses Latino support.

With the US midterm elections approaching, the cost of living and inflationary pressures are becoming among the most pressing issues for Latino voters.

A recent CNN poll shows that 70% of respondents are dissatisfied with President Trump's handling of the economy, and more than 70% disapprove of his approach to inflation and oil prices; another 77% of respondents believe that the president's policies have led to rising prices.

Outside a Latino supermarket in New York, Esmeralda Roustand, a 60-year-old Dominican-American family health assistant, carried two bottles of orange juice and a lunch of chicken with green bananas, saying the food had cost her nearly $20 (about S$25.60). She said that with rising costs of food, rent, and transportation, she was under increasing pressure to maintain her lifestyle in the United States while regularly sending money to her family in the Dominican Republic.

Rustand's situation is not an isolated case. While some U.S. economic indicators still show resilience, many Latino families are feeling the pressure through increasingly lighter shopping bags, rising rents, and forced cancellations of outings and family activities.

Michael Negrón, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former White House economic advisor, points out that inflation has a greater impact on Latino communities because a higher proportion of their income is spent on basic expenses such as food, energy, and transportation.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Hispanic families spend nearly 15% of their budget on food and about 8% on energy, both higher than the national average.

José Rosario, who has worked at a butcher shop and grocery store in Upper Manhattan for seven years, says customer spending habits have changed dramatically. What used to fill a shopping cart with $100 now only buys two small bags; papayas that were 99 cents a pound a year ago now cost $1.99, and some customers are even asking to have them cut open to buy less.

Negroon believes that economic discontent could be a significant variable in the midterm elections. Many Latino voters supported Trump in the hope that he would lower the cost of living; however, policies such as tariffs, mass deportations, and the war with Iran are seen as exacerbating families' anxieties about rising prices.

For ordinary consumers like Rustand, political debates are far less direct than the pressure of weekly shopping. She says, "I feel like the economy is getting worse every day, but you still have to keep buying things because people have to eat."