In the nearly two years since President Trump clinched his return to office, the U.S. economy has come under great duress, leaving families and businesses to suffer through the expensive consequences of constant global conflict and soaring government debt.

It was the financial frustration of a pandemic-weary electorate that helped to catapult Mr. Trump and his fellow Republicans to a rare supermajority in 2024, which they promised to use to defeat the scourge of inflation and slash the profligate government spending they saw as the root of the problem.

But Mr. Trump’s actions in office have complicated — if not undermined — those pledges. With two months until the midterms, some of his policies have prolonged or worsened the economic fortunes of those he promised to help.

It began with a punishing global trade war, which exacerbated the nation’s long quest to bring down the cost of living in the years following the pandemic. This week, the president escalated that offensive and took renewed aim at Canada, setting off a costly tariff tit-for-tat that could drive up prices for Americans.

Nor is the war with Iran anywhere close to complete. The seemingly intractable conflict, which reached its sixth-month anniversary on Friday, has kept gas prices sky high. And the costs of Mr. Trump’s ongoing military intervention have further exacerbated the nation’s fiscal woes, helping to send the debt soaring past $40 trillion. The development has roiled the bond market in ways that have implicated Americans’ finances, chiefly by making borrowing, including mortgages, more expensive.

The president still maintains that his administration has helped families and businesses, and righted the wrongs of his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. But polls increasingly suggest that voters have tired of Mr. Trump’s appeals for patience as he enacts his full agenda. That appears poised to turn the midterms into a referendum on Mr. Trump’s credibility on the economy — a key source for his political rise.

Olu Sonola, the head of U.S. economics at Fitch Ratings, described the dynamic around persistently high prices in America as “death by a thousand cuts.”

He pointed to a confluence of factors, from war to tariffs, that have surfaced over the past year. Mr. Sonola said those developments had exacerbated inflation — and, importantly, shaded consumers’ expectations about the state of the economy.

“The drip, drip, drip — week in and week out, month in and month out — has an impact,” he said.

For Mr. Trump, the stakes are laid bare in a series of concerning economic snapshots released in recent weeks. That includes a key gauge of inflation, published on Wednesday, which found that prices in July rose by 3.7 percent compared with a year earlier. It was the same annualized rate as measured in June, illustrating that price pressures are stuck at a level well above the Fed’s target.

Not all is bad under Mr. Trump. The economy is growing, manufacturing is on the upswing and the labor market has remained steady. Those positives come amid a surge of new investments in artificial intelligence, one that has produced record days in financial markets and raised the odds of an economic boom as the technology truly takes hold.

But Gregory Daco, the chief economist at EY-Parthenon, said some of the data nonetheless illustrated the “economy that could have been.” In a research note this week, he said the United States might have seen more robust growth and other improvements if not for a set of recent shocks that were “policy driven.”

One of those shocks arrived last Saturday, when Mr. Trump officially slapped new tariffs on a subset of imports from Canada, then threatened additional, steep duties on the country’s auto industry. As Canada moved later to retaliate, the spat recalled the frenetic opening days of Mr. Trump’s global trade war that roiled allies and adversaries alike.

Tariffs are taxes on imports, so much as before, the president’s actions appeared primed to hammer American shoppers who buy Canadian goods. In one estimate, the nonpartisan Yale Budget Lab projected this month that households would face, on average, about $1,100 in additional annual costs from Mr. Trump’s updated slate of duties. But, when asked on Thursday about the potential for price increases, Mr. Trump claimed that his tariffs on Canada would be “very good for us.”

Sarah House, a senior economist with Wells Fargo, ultimately projected that inflation could end the year around 3.5 percent. That would be well above what some experts had originally anticipated at the start of 2026, she said, before a confluence of factors — from the rise of A.I. to policy decisions in the nation’s capital — upended the rosier forecasts.

“There’s this big gap between what consumers are taking in” and “how fast money is going out the door,” Ms. House explained.

In a statement, Christopher Phelan, the new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, maintained that long-term expectations around inflation “have remained tempered and unchanged since the beginning of the administration.”

But the uncertainty stemming from Mr. Trump’s policies has complicated matters for the Fed, where policymakers have grown restive about inflation but have held back on raising rates to tame it — at least for now.

“We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed,” Kevin M. Warsh, the chairman of the Fed, said during a speech Friday in Jackson, Wyo. “Otherwise, we have work to do.”

The central bank has been tested in particular by Mr. Trump’s war with Iran, which has caused fuel prices to rise globally. By Friday, the average price at the U.S. pump was still above $4 per gallon, according to AAA, about a dollar more than a year ago. The energy shock has similarly hit diesel and jet fuel, making shipping and travel more expensive.

While the Fed has opted for caution, Mr. Trump has ratcheted up his demands for swift cuts to interest rates. Ignoring the risk that a steep drop could actually exacerbate inflation, Mr. Trump portrayed the reluctant Fed board this month as political and insisted that its governors give cuts a try.

“Now, when we announce good numbers, which we’re doing all the time, they keep driving the interest rates up, because they’re so afraid of inflation,” Mr. Trump said at a recent White House event. “And they shouldn’t be. They should allow interest rates to go down.”

For Mr. Trump, there’s much at stake in the Fed’s decision. As he browbeats the board on monetary policy, the president has also spoken openly about his desire to see borrowing costs lowered so that it is cheaper for the government itself to borrow.

Those demands have come against the backdrop of an ominous milestone: the national debt’s surpassing $40 trillion, further outpacing the country’s total economic output in a given year. The yawning gap underscored just how little Mr. Trump and his Republican allies have managed to cut spending, despite promising austerity to voters two years ago.

“It’s all talk,” said Jessica Riedl, a budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution and former aide to a Republican senator.

Ms. Riedl recalled Mr. Trump’s promises to eliminate the debt entirely, a goal many saw as unrealistic. Instead, the fiscal imbalance has worsened, as has the cost of servicing the debt, which now ranks among the government’s largest expenses.

“Republicans always say, ‘Give us control of government, and we’ll slash spending,’” Ms. Riedl added. “They have control of government, and they have no excuse left.”

Repeatedly, the G.O.P.-led Congress has rejected the deepest cuts in Mr. Trump’s budget submissions. In the process, the president has added to the problem. He has pushed this year for a surge of new military funding that would add to the debt. That is on top of a package of tax cuts enacted last year, which may spur economic activity but still could cost the country trillions over the next decade.

Otherwise, Mr. Trump’s attempts to cut spending have largely been limited to unilateral actions to cut spending it sees as wasteful — efforts that often have been stymied by federal courts.

“I think they’re doing the things they can do with the levers that are available to them as an administration,” said Daniel Kowalski, a budget policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning group. “But there does come a point where you need some help from the legislative branch, and that has not been happening.”

Still, two years of inaction in Washington has rattled Wall Street. Rising yields have rippled across the economy, since consumer borrowing closely tracks the trajectory of 10-year bonds.

In response, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, announced a rare move this month to buy up more government bonds, though it had only a temporary effect. Mr. Bessent also promised a full road map for “fiscal consolidation” to rein in spending, though he provided no details about those plans.

The pledge recalled Mr. Bessent’s bold promises at the start of Mr. Trump’s term to bring the nation’s deficit down to 3 percent of its total output, a target still far in the distance. Still, the secretary maintained that the Trump administration was on track — and would reach its goal in due time.

“We are creating productive assets for future growth, which will be paying taxes all the way down the line,” he told Newsmax. “So I think of that more like pulling back the slingshot and creating a lot of potential energy that becomes kinetic.”