Trump Wants A Tax Day Victory Lap In Las Vegas. The City’s Economy Isn’t Cooperating.

LAS VEGAS — President Donald Trump is decamping to the Nevada desert Thursday to celebrate one of his signature economic promises — “no tax on tips” — a policy designed as a lifeline to this city of long odds and last chances.

For Las Vegas’ working class backbone, that relief has been welcome — and not enough.

“The gas prices are high. That’s just part of it,” said Wayne, 66, a shoe shiner from North Las Vegas, who declined to give his last name. “When you go to buy steaks, it used to be $4.99 a pound. And now it’s $9.99.”

“What can you do? You just have to live with it,” he added.

The president’s stops in Las Vegas and Arizona this week are his latest attempts to reset the affordability narrative — despite the Iran war and past pivots that have failed to arrest his slide in polls.

But the White House believes this one will land. Trump will focus on the “no tax on tips” policy that the administration says was inspired by a Las Vegas waitress; the larger-than-usual tax refunds the White House is celebrating around Tax Day; and broader economic promises of his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” according to a White House official, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

It’s a reset the president’s allies sorely want to see stick — representing a break from the Iran war in a locale far from the Beltway where Trump can connect with real Americans, as he will at a roundtable in downtown Las Vegas Thursday afternoon. But they acknowledge that he needs to make the hard sell.

“He needs to give them hope that things are going to get better — that he has a pro-growth agenda, and they will be better off with his policies,” said John McLaughlin, a longtime Trump pollster who polled Nevada for the president during the 2024 campaign.

The trouble for Trump is that a little less than seven months ahead of the election many Americans aren’t feeling that optimism, and many economic indicators are trending in the wrong direction.

Few places epitomize that contrast — between what the White House is selling and what average employees are experiencing — more than Las Vegas. The city, powered by a working-class and Latino coalition that helped elect Trump in 2024, is especially reliant on tourism and the kinds of discretionary income susceptible to being sucked up by a sudden spike in gas prices.

“The reality is for a lot of people, [the refunds are] going to end up being a buffer for what they're putting in their gas tank,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist and creator of the Sahm rule, a recession indicator.

The University of Michigan’s closely watched consumer sentiment index recently fell to its lowest level on record, underscoring the disconnect between headline economic data and how Americans say they feel about their finances.

And Democrats are only too happy to seize that opening. As the president travels to Nevada, they plan to highlight the temporary nature of his “no tax on tips” policy, which expires after tax year 2028. But mostly, they say, the impacts of the president’s policies are self-evident on the ground.

“It's sad to say I don't have to do a lot of the talking and do a lot of the messaging, because citizens are feeling it,” Nevada State Democratic Party Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno said in an interview. “The story is pretty much telling itself.”

Nevadans are far from the only ones worried about the economy. A poll conducted by YouGov and The Economist released April 14 showed 70 percent of those surveyed rated the economy as “fair or poor.”

Hunter Blankenship, 26, a cocktail server at the Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge, at the north end of the Las Vegas Strip, got a $2,500 tax refund this year, after usually getting about $300. But she says business is slower than it used to be when she started working in restaurants at 18 — and people don’t tip as well as they used to.

“I could be doing better. I make enough to where I have money where I can pay all my bills. But I wouldn't say I'm necessarily able to save as much as I'd like,” Blankenship said. “I'm right there where I'm doing all right but I'm not necessarily able to set myself up for the future.”

Back in Washington, White House aides argue that the benefits of the GOP’s megalaw pushed through last year were never meant to be a one-time benefit such as a refund check. Rather, they are supposed to ripple through the economy via other provisions focused on boosting businesses long-term, translating into more discretionary income for everyone.

“President Trump’s proven agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and energy abundance delivered historic job, wage, and economic growth in his first term – along with the first drop in wealth and income inequality in decades,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said. “Americans can rest assured that this same agenda is laying the groundwork for more historic success in the second Trump presidency.”

The White House event Thursday is expected to feature a handful of Nevadans who have benefited from the administration’s policies, including no taxes on tips and overtime.

And much is riding on this political moment. Trump carried the state in 2024 — the first time a Republican presidential candidate won Nevada in two decades — powered by a working-class and Latino coalition that Joe Lombardo, running for reelection as governor, needs to hold. The race will be a key test of whether the president’s working-class coalition can hold in 2026.

But the economic conditions that coalition is living through, coupled with immigration enforcement actions, have complicated the party’s prospects, particularly as the war dominates the national conversation at the expense of Trump’s affordability message.

Republicans here are quick to note that Biden-era inflation created the wound. But their own voters sent Trump to Washington to heal it — and were already skeptical earlier this year that the economy was improving. Now, the war has made that case even harder.

In a state where independent voters often decide elections, that frustration carries outsized political weight.

“Along partisan lines, it’s falling where you’d expect. But when it comes to voters in the middle, it’s more along the lines of … ‘things have sucked for so long, we’ve been feeling the pinch for so long,’” said one Nevada GOP operative, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “There’s frustration because there were high hopes and expectations that prices would drop under the president, but I think they’re just mad at the longevity of this.”

The operative added that polling shows that the president is “certainly bleeding a bit” with working-class voters.

"I've seen conflicting data about whether he's bleeding them back into Dems or if he's just bleeding them out of participation,” the person said. “I've seen data that suggests both — but I've seen more data suggesting [that people say] ‘I'm just going to stay home.'"