High interest rates have been characterized for years as simply a dampener on the economy, a hindrance to "economic growth". Presenting it in this simple light serves to keep people unaware of its important role, and calls into question why there should ever be high interest rates at all.
It is a fact that when governments spend more money than they bring in and print more money to compensate, they are weakening the free-market economy or intervening in a free-market economy that is already no longer able to meet the demands / burdens placed on it by its population. In doing this, they are also devaluing the currency, weakening its purchasing power. The only protection against this erosion is for interest rates to be raised accordingly. Thus higher interest rates serve as a warning to the public as to how it should prioritize and spend its money in uncertain financial conditions, and it encourages thrift and savings, where the people's wealth can be preserved and gain interest with the passing of time.
In contrast, when interest rates are held artificially low in times of interventionist spending, you are eroding both the ability to purchase, and the ability to save. In other words, you are saying that neither people's wealth nor their time is important.
The public's general lack of knowledge regarding these basic financial realities is what allowed Barack Obama and the democrat-controlled Congress, beginning in 2009, to politicize the Federal Reserve. They politicized the Federal Reserve by installing board members that would hold interest rates artificially low, which allowed the democrats to run more than one trillion dollar deficits every year and accrue more debt than what had been accrued during the entire Iraq war, without it being reflected immediately in the economy. They learned from Jimmy Carter's experience, who lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan in large part because the federal reserve did its job. It raised interest rates to reflect accurately the problems in the economy and the deficit spending. The pain that this caused, like a sensitive hand on a hot burner, ultimately protected both consumers and investors alike from losing the wealth they still had, and prevented further, more grievous damage.
President Trump knows both the federal reserve and how it ought to function, and the long-term damage that deficit spending can do to the economy. This can be seen clearly in this statement from the 1980's: "A nation that spends 200 billion dollars more than it takes in each year is not a wealthy country." Also, the statement from the book, "The America We Deserve", written in 2000: "Higher interest rates encourage savings, while low interest rates encourage free-wheeling spending."
If the inflation and interest rates begin accurately reflecting the spending problem of the last 17 years, President Trump would not be to blame, because while Jimmy Carter was of like mind to the spenders in his own party and was voted out accordingly, the impoverishing spending of the last 17 years has been the responsibility of a reckless Congress, not the work of a successful businessman.
Yet due to the common failure of the media and the public to differentiate between legislative and executive responsibilities, President Trump has been sustaining a very difficult balance between the effort to address the true financial conditions of the country, and that of placating a culture still driven by consumerism, rather than by savings.
To be clear, the spending / low interest rate equation cannot be allowed to continue as it has been, and yet if significant changes are made, it is felt that the pain that might accompany it would be blamed on the President, rather than on those who created the problem. This balancing act is a dead end. It is in fact an impossibility, and should not be necessary. He did not create the problem, nor can he fix the problem entirely by himself.
Because of this, energy, industry and foreign investment has been welcomed into the United States on an unprecedented scale, to help alleviate some of the pain caused by these fiscal policies and thus confirm his legacy as a true friend of the middle class. This can generate more revenue and thus help reduce the difference between revenue and spending, technically alleviating inflation. But "growth" and increase of revenue does not solve the core problem, because regardless of the amount of revenue brought in, the government would still maintain its present spending levels, or spend even more. Thus these measures represent an improvement largely limited to particular individuals in certain pockets of the country where these jobs are being accessed, and to those living in areas where the reductions in energy costs are the greatest. It does not represent a true repair or restoration of the system, nor of the purchasing power of the dollar. It does not represent reduced spending nor reduced prices across all sectors of the economy. It only represents an increase in the amount of money made, and reduced costs in areas of the economy that are affected most by energy/transportation costs.
This is why there is a disconnect between the positive "growth" figures given, and the lagging poll numbers, and why it is being reported that so many people "aren't feeling it". It is because the actual economic conditions in the country overall haven't changed much, because the system itself isn't fixed.
The left and the leftist media have been bringing these polls and economic conditions up to the President regularly, because they want the public to think of the presidency in terms of a king, so that they can make him out to be a fool, placing all of the blame on him for why everything hasn't suddenly been cured in one year flat. This is done as a diversionary tactic, to avoid ever having the public find and address the true sources of the problem - one of which can be addressed this very year: Congress.

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