One month ago, in these pages, I wrote that President Trump’s efforts to drastically reorder the global economy via sweeping tariffs was a significant gamble, both politically and economically.
Now, as Trump marks 100 days in office, multiple polls show that instead of paying off, Trump’s tariff gamble is rapidly eroding his political support.
Indeed, not only has Trump’s overall approval rating dropped 14-points from inauguration day, going from net-plus-7 to net-negative-7 per RealClearPolitics poll tracker, but on the economy – a previous strength – Americans widely disapprove of Trump’s approach.
In the first week of his term, roughly one-half (49%) of Americans approved of what they believed Trump’s economic policies would be, versus 37% who disapproved, according to Economist/YouGov polling.
That same poll, conducted at the end of April, underscores just how damaging Trump’s chaotic tariff rollout has been to his own political fortunes.
The April poll showed a 27-point decline in approval of Trump’s handling of inflation and a 22-point drop in approval on the economy – significant erosions within just 100 days.
If the Economist/YouGov polls were markedly different from other polls, they could easily be dismissed as outliers.
However, the opposite is true: virtually every recent poll – including nine of the 10 most recent compiled by RealClearPolitics – show Trump’s approval on the economy underwater by double digits.
To be sure, the collapse in support for Trump’s economic policies should hardly be surprising given the deep unpopularity of tariffs and the haphazard way they were rolled out.
Roughly six-in-10 (61%) of Americans disapprove of the administration’s trade and tariff policies, and a majority (54%) believe tariffs will make their personal finances worse, according to NBC polling.
Just one-quarter (24%) of Americans in the NBC survey expect tariffs to improve their personal finances.
Moreover, Americans are upset with what they believe is the administration’s fascination with tariffs at the expense of other economic priorities, such as inflation.
Nearly 7-in-10 (69%) Americans believe the White House is not focused enough on lowering prices, while 62% say the Trump administration is focusing too much on tariffs, per CBS polling.
Taken together, at this point in Trump’s term, Americans are increasingly frustrated with an administration that promised to unleash economic growth but is now seemingly obsessed with tariffs that are choking the American economy.
In fact, the negative impacts of tariffs are no longer confined to polling.
Last week, the Commerce Department announced that for the first quarter of 2025, GDP decreased at an annual rate of 0.3% – the first quarter of negative growth since 2022.
As Chris Rupkey, Chief Economist at Fwdbonds described it, “there is simply no way for policy advisors to sugar-coat this. Growth has simply vanished.”
The rapid decline in support for Trump’s economic policies should serve as a wakeup call to the administration to either slow down or reverse course altogether.
Among the issues that matter to voters, the economy and cost of living are uniquely powerful. As such, if Trump’s approval on the economy continues to decline, his overall approval will suffer.
And yet, Trump’s own recent comments signal that he has no intention of pausing his radically unpopular policies.
Discussing the possibility that Trump’s trade wars could lead to empty store shelves this summer during a Cabinet meeting, the President said, “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.”
Those comments – and the overall chaos Trump is unleashing on the country – are more than a gift to Democrats, who are all but certain to use rising anger over the economy to hammer Republicans in midterms.
For weeks, even as economists warned of the inherent dangers of tariffs and trade wars, Trump and other officials such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick maintained that tariffs were a necessary “medicine” in order to revive the American economy.
Trump himself continues to maintain that his trade policies will make the country’s economy “boom.”
But, for all of the pain, no new trade deals have been signed.
Further, despite the administration’s repeated touting of planned investments in America, it will be many years before any plants or factories are complete, and in the meantime, tariffs will weigh on the economy.
To that end, aside from doing economic damage, Trump’s tariff gamble is now doing considerable political damage.
The economy had been among Trump’s strongest issues, and was a critical reason he won last November, and now he has worse ratings on the economy than at any point in either term.
Put another way, rather than bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. en masse, raising any significant revenue, or leading to more beneficial trade deals, it now appears that the biggest impact of tariffs will be as a tax on Trump’s political support.
Douglas Schoen is a longtime Democratic political consultant.
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