America's Talking - Poll: American Support for Trump on the Economy Is Falling

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

(The Center Square) – Americans aren’t thrilled with how President Donald Trump is handling the economy, despite the economy and immigration being his top-performing issues in polls leading up to the election. The president’s overall job approval ratings are barely distinguishable from how he’s polling on the economy, according to The Center Square Voters' Voice poll conducted by Noble Predictive Insights. Among the more than 2,500 registered voters surveyed, 44% indicated they approved of how the president is doing his job and 43% approved of how he’s handling the economy. More than half – 53% and 54%, respectively – indicated they were unhappy with his economic and overall job performance.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_28b1e47e-6a55-4086-8f1c-599050340d34.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulip, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. President Donald Trump marks his 100th day of his second term in office on Wednesday, April 30th. With that occasion in mind, the Center Square this week launched its latest voters' voice poll, surveying more than 2,500 registered voters across the U.S., about how they think the president is doing on issues such as the economy, border security, the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge and more. Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, the Center Square has published a couple of stories off the poll results,

and more stories will be published at theCenterSquare.com in the coming days and week. What are your takeaways? Yeah, I mean, this is a really interesting poll, giving a clear insight into how voters feel, in particular registered voters, about the Trump administration and how he's doing so far. And so I think some top-level takeaways is that, you know, the president still generally has the American people's trust when it comes to the topic of immigration. I wrote about that at the center square.com. Of course, he's been pretty aggressive. He's faced a lot of pushback in the courts that have sort of slowed his progress, the president's progress. But generally, Americans are behind the president on immigration. They haven't, you know, abandon him at all. And of course, that was one of the main things he was elected on. So according to our poll, 47. percent of those surveyed say that federal immigration policy has gotten better compared to only 32

percent who say it's gotten worse. So that's a 15 point spread, you know, a 15 point advantage for it improving, saying that immigration policy has improved versus those who say it's gotten worse. Now, if you take those who say there's been no change, you know, you get up to 60 percent. People who say it's either gotten better or there's been no change. It's 60 percent. There is a small contingent that say that Trump is not acting aggressively enough. They want basically people kicking down doors and bombing the cartels and, you know, taking really aggressive measures. And so in their mind, it's not that they oppose Trump from a leftward position is that they think he's not being aggressive enough. But so the people who want Trump to keep doing what he's doing on immigration

or maybe even to go harder, I think will be over half of the country. And so that's a big takeaway. Now, however, many other issues for the president do not look nearly as good. In particular, the economy, you know, on inflation are what helped Trump get elected. But right now, about 37% of voters in our poll approve of Trump's handling of the economy compared to 54% who either strongly disapprove or somewhat disapprove. So, Dan, he's underwater on his handling of the economy. you have to imagine that that goes back to tariffs because inflation has actually been pretty good since Trump took office. The inflation numbers are good. The jobs numbers are not bad at all.

Inflation, I think, or rather tariffs is really what this comes down to. Yeah, and it's, it's, I was going to ask that, Casey. It's really about the uncertainty of the tariffs. When earlier this month, Trump put in place the reciprocal tariffs on dozens and dozens of foreign countries, Europe, Asia, Africa, et cetera, and stocks tanked pretty much over the next couple days. And then when he lifted those tariffs, about a week later, stocks rose again. So I get what President Trump is trying to do. He's using the tariffs as a negotiating tactic to get better trade deals with the other countries. But that is going to take time. And with what's been happening with the stark market and the uncertainty

over the tariffs and that concerns about what it's going to mean for American businesses, that story certainly has weighed on voters. Right. I mean, the whole main part of the pitch of tariffs is that it will kind of fundamentally reshape the American economy at home over time by reinvigorating and recreating an industrial base, a manufacturing base, because businesses will have incentives to build factories in the U.S. and start making things in the U.S. again. But building a factory and starting to produce something is going to take years and years. I mean, this is going to, something that would not really take effect until after Trump leaves office.

could see maybe some small gains, maybe people revamp factories quickly or they expand their existing production in the U.S. But to see a wholesale remaking of sort of industrializing the U.S., I think you can make a strong argument for it. You can make a national security argument that we're too reliant on China for our pharmaceuticals, for instance, when we're possibly going to go to war with them over Taiwan, that, you know, shouldn't we make a certain percentage of our ships here in the U.S., which we basically don't do it all? If we're We want to be secure nationally. So there's a lot of strong arguments for boosting domestic manufacturing.

But as you said, it takes a lot of time. And right now, the markets and the political cycles work in very short time frames. Traders, you know, there's quarterly reports. These companies have to have their earnings calls. Traders are working, you know, by the minute. It's like, you know, wait a decade for a wholesale change to the U.S. economy. I think it's a tough sell. It's going to take a lot of political backbone to make.

it happened. And then, you know, separate from that is just this overall trade war with China that we've seen, you know, growing. China's shown a lot of resistance, a lot of sort of political will to take, go to the mat with us, which I think that's also spooking investors. And then, you know, you can't discount just the general uncertainty of what will Trump do next. That's, that's got to be baked in a little bit. You never know. At any given moment, he could announce certain tariffs are back. And I think that is spooking investors. Casey, I don't want to give too much away because we're still analyzing the polling data and working on additional stories. But briefly, let's stick with Doge. We also polled more than

2,500 registered voters on what they think of the Department of Government of Efficiency. I know you're working on a story for the weekend about those poll results. To briefly share with listeners what you're seeing, Right. So we've seen that Doja's been highly controversial. And when you ask registered voters, you know, basically, which of the following best describes your feelings towards these cuts? Either Doge is cutting too much. They're getting it just right or they're not cutting enough. 47% say that they are cutting too much. Twenty-eight percent say they're getting it right. And 12% say they're not cutting enough. The rest are unsure. So if you want to group those together and say they're

cutting too much is 47%. And then those who say they're doing it just right or they're not cutting enough, that would be 40%. So you have the plurality. Basically, it kind of breaks, it breaks down to 47 versus 40 and then a very large 14% that are not sure. I mean, if you look at the breakouts here, 75% of Democrats say Doge is cutting too much, whereas only 19% of Republicans say the same thing. So it's clear. political bias here, political lines here, obviously, Republicans want more cuts. Democrats say this is out of control. That has been a lot of criticism overcutting USAID. And there's so much talk about how Social Security is going to get cut, although I really think that's not going to happen. So right now there's some hesitancy as he gets Doge and Elon Musk is looking like he's going to take a step back. I guess Musk tried to take on the entire federal government. And right now it looks like the federal government may have won. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with all of the Center Square

Voters Voice Poll Stories at thecentresquare.com.