Pickups, trucks and SUVs are king on the roads in rural Georgia, with huge machines and their massive engines seeming to come towards you at every turn.
Inflation – particularly the increased price of “gas” – is a big concern for voters here when they’re asked for their thoughts on the election. It’s understandable as many see their choice to drive something with a six-litre engine as being central to “the American way”.
Things were different four years ago, some say, but there has been a lot of water under the highway bridges since then.
When parking up a Chrysler saloon at the National Barrel Horse Association (NBHA) world championships in Perry, Georgia, it feels like you’ve arrived at a gunfight with a spoon.
Competitors and attendees have come from Texas, Ohio, Florida, Virginia and beyond, with Dodge Rams, Ford F150s, Chevrolet Silverados and Toyota Tacomas – gas guzzlers galore – the vehicles of choice.
Barrel racing is a rodeo event where human and horse are timed completing a cloverleaf like pattern around three barrels set in a triangle formation. A good run takes about 15 seconds.
“Cowboy” Jack, who travelled from North Carolina with his palominos to compete, says his truck, pulling a substantial trailer equipped with lodgings for him and his horses, burned through a full tank of gas on the 5½-hour drive down, costing him about $130 (€120) to refill.
“Used to be about $80,” he says. “Everything has went up, way up.”
In Georgia, gas prices peaked in June 2022 at almost $4.50 a gallon (3.75 litres), according to the American Automobile Association, having at times fallen under $2 before the Covid-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine.
They have been steadily declining as the presidential election approaches, now standing at an average of just under $3 a gallon in the Peach State. People look like they’re about to be sick on learning that the same volume would set them back about $7 in Ireland.
The economy is the top election issue for 81 per cent of US voters, according to polling by the Pew Research Center, but it is the main issue for 93 per cent of those identifying as Republicans.
When it comes to inflation, their ire, and that of some economists, is aimed at the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package signed by Joe Biden shortly after he succeeded Donald Trump in the White House.
Jonathan Ketcham, a research professor in the Arizona State University department of economics, says Covid-19 policies included “poorly targeted stimulus and spending packages” that boosted demand more than the pandemic dampened it.
“The effects of these decisions disproportionately squeeze the poor and middle class around the world,” he says, adding that the UN global index for food prices was up nearly 80 per cent from the beginning of 2020 through mid-2022 and that “these trends have continued”.
Back at the NBHA event, super senior class competitors are preparing horses for their runs in the arena as preacher Nancy Hammond concludes her “Cowboy Church” sermon. She recalls how early in her rodeo career she was thrown out of a moving pickup and “left for dead”. However, she says, her faith helped her to walk out of hospital just eight hours later.
As the sermon concludes, businesses around the site are setting up displays of saddles, clothes, jewellery, buckets, cowboy hats and CBD products for horses. The event has a feel a little like the National Ploughing Championships, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Food vendor Christopher has his corndog stand ready for the day’s trade. He says he has faced a perfect storm in recent years as input costs increased and people’s discretionary spending contracted.
“It’s steadily on the incline – dairy, meats, paper, gas for the fryer, labour, everything,” he says. “It hurts and we have to spread that out. A hand-dipped corndog would have been $4, now it’s $7. It makes it difficult to sell them.”
The annual barrel racing event runs over nine days, but Christopher says the expectations he had from years past are not being met. “We would typically see lines forming, more people out, and it just hasn’t been happening. Today is show time, we should be busy.”
Trump has sought to tailor his campaign message to appeal to Americans grappling with higher prices, stating that “inflation will vanish completely” should he win a second term. While consumer prices jumped by some 7.5 per cent during his four years in office, they’ve risen by almost 20 per cent under Biden.
Inflation is now tracking closer to the US Federal Reserve’s target of 2 per cent, having peaked at 9.1 per cent in mid-2022, but that doesn’t mean the cost of groceries, clothing and other day-to-day items are falling.
Neil has travelled from Daytona Beach, Florida, to sell his wares at the NBHA event. Jopps Tack, founded by his grandparents, claims to have offered “everything for the horse since 1965″ and his stand is busy with people perusing saddles, halters, bits, reins and boots.
He brought his range of products five hours up country in a semi-truck and estimates the fuel cost for the round trip will be about $600, and then there are lodging and food costs. “Before you sell the first thing, you’ve got quite a lot of money that you’ve got to make back.”
The business offers financing on its products, which Bennett says more people are taking up given many saddles now fall into the $3,000 to $5,000 range. His suppliers have raised their costs and interest and credit card rates have risen.
Asked how he thinks things could be improved for businesses and consumers, his solution is simple – return Trump to the White House.
“All I can say is that when he was president our sales were great, the economy was great, and ever since he left office, it has gone downhill,” he says. “I just know that for us, as a business, our best years we’ve ever had were under Trump.”
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris last week told an undecided voter in Pennsylvania, who was worried about grocery prices, that she would introduce a national ban on price gouging in times of crisis. The aim, she said, is to stop companies “taking advantage of the desperation and need of the American consumer and jacking up prices without consequences”.
Trump, who has been keen to depict his rival as a communist, has likened the proposal to “something straight out of Venezuela or the Soviet Union”.
The Republican has said he will tackle the issue via measures including tariffs on imports and deporting migrant workers by the million. A panel of Nobel Prize-winning economists earlier this year co-wrote a letter raising concerns that such moves could “reignite’' rather than stifle inflation.
Jim Freeman is standing beside his son-in-law after driving eight hours from Wythe County, Virginia, in his Dodge Ram to see his granddaughter compete in the NBHA barrel races. Asked what the election issues are in his home state, which Harris is expected to win, he cites “sky rocketing” prices and the fact “our democracy is gone to s**t, if you will”.
“I do okay, don’t get me wrong,” says the highway construction superintendent, “but there’s people who make a lot less than I do and I don’t know how they manage it”.
He says he believes things can be fixed, but it will take a while to do it even though the surge in inflation followed so suddenly after Biden came to power in 2021.
Does he think Covid was a factor?
“It was, but I never trusted that either,” he adds. “I’m a southern boy – a gun-toting, America-loving, constitution-loving redneck, if you will.
“We hunt, we fish, my granddaughter is doing the horse thing, but everything is just gone crazy. It’s hard to do it, it’s hard to make a living these days.”
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