Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Approval Crashes as Tariffs Crush Economy

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

Andrew Egger breaks down the new polling from CBS News and YouGov showing Donald Trump's tariffs and economic plan has been unpopular with voters as his approval continues to drop.

Hey guys, it's Andrew Egger with The Bulwark. I'm here to talk a new CBS News, YouGov, Trump poll that just dropped this morning. We are coming out of a wild couple weeks of the White House thrashing the economy around like a crocodile that has just crunched down on an antelope. And Americans are trying their best to wrap their heads around the whole thing,

around where things stand. The bottom line of this poll, Trump is really, really in the danger zone here economically. So let's break it down. The economic numbers are where most of this poll is. That's where most of the news has been. If you've been paying attention the last couple of weeks, this poll is really just screaming that Americans are not picking up what Trump is putting down specifically with regard to

the trade war that's been everywhere. Fundamentally, many more Americans think these trade wars that Trump is picking with the whole world will be a mistake than otherwise. In the short term, 65% of Americans say the new tariffs are going to make the economy think these trade wars that Trump is picking with the whole world will be a mistake than otherwise. In the short term, 65% of Americans say the new tariffs are going to make the economy worse. Only 8% think it will be better. Now, that's the short run. Obviously, it's kind of hard to look around at everything that's happening right now and say, yeah, in the short term, we're going to do really hot. But even in the long run, Trump does a little better than that, but he's still underwater. 34% of people in this poll say that tariffs will eventually improve the economy.

42% say the economy will be worse off in the long run. Meanwhile, 75% of Americans think prices are going to go up in the short term. 48% think prices will be higher even in the long term, compared to only 30% who think that tariffs will lower prices sooner or later. I mean, the hits keep coming here. Let's just do a couple more economic numbers real quick. Back in March, 42% of people said Trump's policies were making them worse off. Now that's 49%, with only 21% saying they're getting better off as a result of Trump's policies. He had a plus two approval rating on the economy as a whole at the beginning of March, a minus four rating on the economy there at the end of March.

He's minus 12 as far as his overall handling of the economy now. He's down to negative 20 points, 20 points underwater on his handling of inflation as an issue. All these numbers obviously pointing the wrong direction for Trump after having been a major, major part of his victory over Kamala Harris last November. The economy was routinely ranked as a good indicator for him going in. Okay, now check out this split. When voters are asked to evaluate Trump's tariff goals, he doesn't do too bad. 51% of voters approve of the goals of his trade war, 49% disapprove. But when they are asked to evaluate his approach to these tariffs, that number drops dramatically. 37% of voters

approve of the approach to these tariffs, 63% disapprove. So if you break down those two numbers to put it another way, more than one in four people who supports the trade war in theory has major reservations with how he's putting it into practice. And we are only a week and change past the much ballyhooed Liberation Day, where Trump slammed a bunch of tariffs in place all around the world. Of course, we were a week past that and like 15 news cycles past that, given how quickly all this has developed and changed, and how much ping ponging around there's been but but that that that chasm that that chasm that already exists after only about a week between goals and execution is something that is pretty striking and will be worth continuing to watch here.

So keep in mind, up to this point, most of the damage that's been done by this trade war has been in the semi-abstract territory of the markets. There are real world consequences to the dramatically falling off a cliff stock markets. They don't feel very good for people's 401ks. They are certainly of pain to come. But a lot of this stuff remains somewhat abstract at this point. And we have yet to really hit the sort of ground level shocks that we know are going to be coming if these trade wars persist. You know, big hikes in prices, layoffs, dramatic damage to consumer confidence, the possibility of an honest to God recession. These would be the sort of things that would really threaten to drive a knife

into Trump's approval here. I mean, you think back to Joe Biden's term, when by most objective measures, the economy was doing really well, especially relative to the rest of the world, especially coming out of, you know, the COVID pandemic. But he ended up getting killed on the economy because the single most unavoidably in your face metric, which was inflation, had gotten out of control in the middle years of his term. And people were just pissed off that prices were higher. You didn't have to be paying attention to the news. You didn't even have to be paying attention to kind of the broader economy as a whole. You didn't have to be reading about any of that to go to the store and just kind of be

crabby that prices were higher. And that played you know, that played out in a in a way that we all we all saw last November. So you look at this poll. Again, where where do people feel like they're going to get reliable information about how tariffs are going to impact the economy? A lot of this is unsurprising. 77% of people trust economists, 82% of people trust job and unemployment reports, 49% of people trust Donald Trump. But the highest number in all of this is and this is the significant one to watch. Eighty seven percent of people trust their personal experience. The things people are going to be experiencing in their own lives as this trade war unfolds are not going to be fun if Trump holds to his current course. So that's the that's the thing to watch, you know, abstract, abstract implementation of all this. He's already taken

a major hit. What's going to happen next when people really start feeling this stuff? So is there good news for the president here? I guess the least bad news for him. It's not horrible if you're the president to have this be the least bad news. His overall approval number is doing a lot better than many of these economy questions. He is, quote unquote, only down, you know, net six points from March in this poll. He's down to 47% approve, 53% disapprove. That's down from a 50-50 split in March and a 53% approval rating in February. So he's basically been losing a net six points a month. That's not great for him, but it's better than his numbers ever really were in his first term where he tended to hover around 42, 43% a lot of the time. And it is also a lot better than his economic numbers,

as I've been talking about, are looking right now. He's getting, I mean, this is kind of a grim thing to contemplate, is that he seems to be getting mostly a boost from his immigration numbers. That remains his best issue at just a straight 50-50, which is really, really cool, given all the news that's been coming out about how that has been going. I'd like to meet those 50% of people. But anyway, the point is, every indication is that this honeymoon period that Trump has been in is really running out fast in terms of the economic stuff specifically. He's got some ballast from immigration. But immigration, as we saw last time around, that's a motivating

issue for people ideologically. A lot of people care a lot about it, but it's really hard to find anything that matters as much to people as the economic indicators that they can't get away from, that they can't avoid. A hurting economy drives politics. Even many Trump sympathetic voters who think he has the good of the country at heart here and his eyes on the right prize here are really starting to feel bewildered by the way he's going about specifically this tariff war, but also just things like inflation in general. There is starting to be a seed planted of, wait a minute, is there a plan here? What's going on with all this stuff? And again, just to reiterate, the worst economic shocks, if Trump stays to this current tariff course, are yet to come.

So that's where things stand right now. This is the sort of thing that we're seeing replicated in a lot of polls. Again, I think that a lot of times people think of Trump supporters, like how could you support Donald Trump after all this time? If you still are, if you still do, it must basically be impossible to strip you away from him at this point just because of you throw your hands around all the stuff that's happened over the last decade. But really, that's I mean, that's not borne out in the data. That's not really a true fact. People clumped around Donald Trump last November in greater numbers at a higher percentage than had ever not see real inroads, especially if the economy continues to go south. And that matters not just for the upcoming midterms. That matters for all kinds of reasons that the most the most significant of which is that if you are a populist autocrat wannabe, if you want to be this person who just sort of sweeps aside the the governing rules and restrictions and guardrails and obstacles that the constitutional system places in your way as president between you and whatever it is you might want to do, it is a lot easier to sell that to the nation, sell yourself as the people's champion who's

not going to let the Constitution or Congress or the courts get in your way. Much easier to sell that if you are sitting at a 53, 54, 55 percent approval rating rather than at 47, 45, 42 percent and sinking. So we'll see what continues to happen here. We'll keep you posted on all of it.