The NPR Politics Podcast - Americans Give Trump Low Marks On The Economy In New Poll

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Only 36% of Americans approve of President Trump’s handling of the economy in a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. We discuss what might be driving that discontent and how much Trump’s tariff policies are to blame. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I'm Domenka-Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And we are recording this at 1225. PM on Wednesday, December 17th, 2025. Today on the show, a new NPR PBS News Marist poll finds that Americans give President Trump low marks on his handling of the economy. So, Domenico, what are some of your big takeaways from this poll? Well, I mean, we've been hearing all year about how affordability is the big issue. So we dove in on just how much it's affecting people and what the cost of living means. And a few things really jump out here. 70% of people say,

that their area is no longer affordable for average families. That's up from 45% over the summer, which is a huge jump. 61% of people say that the economy is simply not working for them personally. And a majority of people actually say that we are in a recession currently, even though technically we're not in one. But clearly it's a thermometer of how people are really feeling about whether or not they can afford things. Danielle, I'm just curious, how does that match up with the economic? data? I mean, it matches up relatively well in the sense that recently we have gotten some increasing flashing yellow to red lights on the economy. The latest jobs report that just came out

showed that unemployment ticked up. It's at a four-year high. We have elevated inflation. And as Jerome Powell told us last week, that inflation is in the area of goods as opposed to services. Jerome Powell being the Fed chair, who President Trump doesn't like, but he is the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Yes, thank you very much. Yeah. And he said that goods inflation is entirely in sectors where there are tariffs. So yes, tariffs are driving prices upward. And this poll shows that Americans are worried about that. We asked a question, how concerned are you about the impact of tariffs on your personal finances? And two-thirds of adults said very or somewhat concerned. One-third said not very. The footnote here is that this being America 2025, of course, that is colored by party. Democrats and independents were much more likely than Republicans to say they were concerned about tariffs. But still, Republicans tend to be overwhelmingly in the tank for Trump. But here, you still had more than a third of Republicans saying they're concerned about tariffs, Trump's central economic policy, hurting their personal finances.

That is really significant, I think. Well, before Trump really started talking about how it's Democrats' fault that prices are so high while he was being pushed back on over the summer, Republicans had said a majority of them had said that they felt that tariffs were a big problem and that they were concerned about them impacting their bottom line. And now that's changed. So clearly they've bought into some of that messaging from Trump. And notably here, when we talk about tariffs, in addition to two thirds of people being concerned about them potentially impacting their budgets, 40, 5% of people said that prices were their top economic concern. Nothing else came close. Second was housing at 18% and tariffs were third at 15%. So and tariffs and prices, of course, somewhat interchangeable. And that's a thing that Trump did that he is getting more blame for than, you know, any other president would because they didn't really bother with that. Domenico, for as long as President Trump has been on the political scene, he has had the economy as one of his strengths.

You know, he was the billionaire developer. He was the person whose legend was built on the apprentice and the celebrity apprentice. And you'd talk to voters and they would say, yeah, you know, I don't like the way he tweets or I don't like everything he says or he might be a little course. But this man understands the economy. And in 2024, he ran on fixing the economy on a golden age for America. So is the economy no longer a strength for the president? That shine has clearly worn off. 36% of people approve of the job that he's doing on handling the economy.

It's his worst mark that he's ever gotten on this score. It's only tied in the last six years with Joe Biden from 2022 when inflation was going through the roof and was a huge concern. He was at 36% as well back then. Well, and that was when inflation peaked at around 9%, which was high. Yeah. And, you know, it was in a midterm year. Democrats wound up losing some seats in the House, even though they did better than people thought that they would. And it's not though because the economy was a positive thing for Democrats. Trump is somebody who ran on being able to lower prices. It's a big reason why he was able to win in 2024. It's a big reason why Latinos, for example, crossed over to vote for him. And this time now we're starting to see all through this year that Latinos have really slid away from Trump. They're only. at a 30% approval rating when it comes to the economy and his handling of it. And it's just another data point of Latinos and some of these crossover voters really sliding away from Trump altogether.

I think what Domenico is saying there is also getting at something that's really unique and that we really need to point out about Trump's marks on the economy here because regular listeners will know we have said this many times on this podcast. The president in general is not directly to blame nor can directly. take credit for how the economy is doing. You have different business cycles. You have people's different supply and demand that can drive prices up or down. You have, you know, different shocks around the world. You have Russia invading Ukraine, driving oil prices up, all that kind of stuff. But with Trump, he has unilaterally pushed a lever that makes prices go up in imposing all of these tariffs on all of these goods and goods from all of these countries. And not only that, but he talks so much about it as being a super great policy.

This creates a huge liability when you have two-thirds of people being worried about tariffs directly impacting their bank account. This means that come next year around the midterms, you can imagine Republicans potentially running away from tariffs, Democrats really hammering on tariffs as they hammer the affordability and cost of living issue. And there was a remarkable thing that happened in President Trump's rally last week, where he was talking about how great tariffs are and wanting to bring manufacturing back to America and how it's such a great policy. And then he started talking about, like, you know, and maybe you don't need 37 pencils or 37 dolls. The doll line. Yeah. And so really putting the onus on you as a consumer, like, you know, maybe pull back on your consumption. And by the way, telling people to pull back on their consumption, that is a remarkable economic message for a president to have.

Well, it's clearly not working as far as convincing most people because in this survey, not only is Trump at 36% for his handling, but Democrats now have the advantage on who you trust more, which party you trust more in handling the economy. It's not a big advantage. It's four points, 37 to 33. But this is significant because it's a 20 point turnaround from 20. 2022 when Republicans had a 16 point advantage 39 to 23 back then. So this is a category that often Republicans do better on, but now clearly independents have slid away very heavily from the Republican Party and believing that they're going to do a good job on it. And a big piece of that is because of what Danielle is saying that Trump took active measures to actually make prices worse when it comes to tariffs. I also think that it's necessary and important to note that the strong Republican support that Trump continues to get and the fact that they

seem to be buying into the tariff messaging also exposes what the true thing is that they're most attracted to Trump. It was never the economy, economic anxiety. It's really about culture and culture war stuff. And that's why Trump and people in his cabinet continue to come back to things like immigration, even at times and events when they're supposed to be talking about the economy. All right. We are going to take a quick break. we will be back in just a moment. And we're back. And we've been talking about the results of a new NPR, PBS News, Marist poll that's out today. And the numbers are something of a flashing red light for the president

and his party. Tonight, President Trump will deliver a primetime address to the nation. Danielle, what do you know about what he's going to talk about? We don't really know a lot. We do know that Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, told Fox News yesterday that Trump is going to be talking about, as she put it, his historic accomplishments over the last year and maybe teasing some policy that's going to be coming in 2026. She did talk about a couple of issues like lower gas prices, something the White House has really been hitting on a lot. Border Security, of course, something they love talking about. So I would bet we'll hear about those. I would bet we'll hear quite a bit more about the economy because that's what they're trying to focus on right now. But again, Trump is unpredictable. We don't know exactly what we're going to get.

Yeah. And this is something of a reset moment or an effort to refocus the nation's attention on the message that the White House wants to get out. These are prepared remarks delivered straight to a camera without a bunch of reporters there to ask questions or get the president off topic, without a crowd that sometimes gets him to juiced and wanting to entertain people. But I have been fascinated by something of a disconnect between the way the president has talked about the economy and the way his administration has talked about the economy. So we've talked a bit about how he's talked about it. Danielle, what is the message that, you know, the more carefully controlled message coming from the Trump administration about the economy and what to expect? The first one is this is all still Biden's fault, that Biden was such a poor steward of the economy and inflation. was so high under Joe Biden that there's still a hangover. And J.D. Vance, vice president, did a speech in Pennsylvania yesterday where he stuck to this message much better than Trump has managed to. I believe one quote he said was Rome wasn't built in a day. The idea being that,

look, prices rose quite a bit under Biden. It's going to take us a while to slow that all down again. Well, it has been 11 months of the Trump administration, so you have to wonder how long voters will be willing to settle for a scapegoat as opposed to a solution. But that is one message. Another is things are going to get better next year. Especially they talk about this with regards to the one big, beautiful bill and the tax provisions in it that will lower taxes for some people. For example, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, Social Security. The White House loves to talk about that as well. So when you do your taxes next year, the White House is saying maybe you'll get some more money back. That may be true. And they're hoping that that will juice the

economy. But I would add there has been analysis from the Yale budget lab showing that that big beautiful bill will likely benefit higher earners far more than benefiting lower earners. And higher earners are not the problem that the economy has right now. The stock market is doing quite well for higher earners. And people in our survey, by the way, said the stock market volatility was last on their list as far as their top economic concern. And yet it seems to be something that Trump is hyper-focused on. If the stock market vacillates or goes up or down one way, or the other. He seems to change his policy direction. And, you know, from a left-wing populist point of view, you can look at him as a billionaire and say, well, that is what the wealthier people are

concerned about, because that's where most of their money is. And there's a disconnect between his economic policies and what most people are feeling. And clearly we've seen now in polling that people feel like this is his economy. This is Trump's economy. And they don't think that he's necessarily taken steps to bring prices down. They say that his policies have made things worse. So it's different than being able to say, well, you know, most presidents get more blame or credit than they deserve when he's taken the actions he has on tariffs. Right. When he talks about tariffs specifically, the message they have been putting forward on tariffs is that it's going to help manufacturing, that by disincentivizing all of us consumers

from buying, say, steel and aluminum or whatever else from overseas. Dolls. Yes, dolls from overseas, t-shirts, whatever. Then you're going to help American factories that make dolls and t-shirts and so on. Thus far, we have not seen that. We've seen manufacturing employment going down this year. The White House, of course, would say this is a long, long-term project. It's just going to take a while to build all those factories.

the big question is how long are the American people willing to wait? And also, is that really going to work? All right, Domenico, so they're saying be patient. I want to talk more broadly about this poll and what we learned about how the American people are feeling about the job the president is doing and sort of what the political implications are for that. Yeah, it's tough to say be patient when your political standing is as bad as Trump's is right now. 38% overall say that they approve of the job that Trump is doing. That's the lowest of this second term and the lowest number he's seen in Maris surveys since April of 2018. And in 2018, his number didn't go much higher than that. It sat at 41% in the last Maris poll before the 2018 midterm elections.

And Republicans lost 40 seats in the House that year. And I think this is going to be a big consideration. You mentioned a flashing red light. How many lights do you have to see before it becomes something that, you know, kind of engulfs everything that you're seeing at all, right? I mean, I don't see how Republicans see much silver lining anywhere. Everything seems to be a red light because this is what people's top concern are. They're placing it on Trump, special elections, the elections this year. They've all pointed in the same direction. People saying the economy is their big concern and they're

voting for Democrats. So there's a midterm coming next November. Are Republicans in trouble based on what you see in this poll? Big time right now. I mean, if the election were next week, I'd say that this could be a major wave election. It's not. And I think that one thing that maybe Republicans can take some solace in is that you don't have overwhelming numbers of people saying that they trust Democrats to handle the economy. It's only a four point advantage for Democrats. Although, like I said, it was a huge turnaround from where it was in 2022 and historically where it generally is. I would also say the thing that they have to be concerned about outside of the economy is the intensity of disapproval of President Trump. 50 percent of registered voters in our

survey said that they strongly disapprove of the job Trump is doing. Only 30 percent of independents say that they approve of the job that he's doing. And the people who feel this strongly, the people who are angry are the ones who turn out in midterm elections more so than any other group. And we've seen over the last few years that Democrats have started to be able to win in low turnout elections because of how the demography of the parties has shifted. Yes, Americans very much vote on the economy, but it's hard to underestimate how much just general vibes contribute to how people vote. It's very much true. And we have seen some little smidges of Republicans being willing to say no thank you to things that Trump has wanted.

For example, in Indiana, the Trump pushed redistricting effort. A bunch of Indiana Republican lawmakers said, no, we're not going to do that. This past week, we saw a lot of conservatives really come out with some backlash against some callous remarks that Trump said about the late liberal director Rob Reiner in the wake of Rob Reiner's killing. Those are two little data points, but when you have things like that, like distractions like the Rob Reiner thing, willingness to say no thank you, willingness of at least a few people to vote against his wishes, I think it opens the door for more people to say, well, you know, he's only in office a couple of years longer. I think the key thing there, though, is the sort of intensity of approval. If that's

going down, then it's more likely to lead to people staying home and not necessarily voting, especially with Trump not on the ballot, because Republicans have really struggled in getting conservatives to turn out to the polls when Trump is not on the ballot. I'll give you just a data point from our survey that maybe speaks to the smidges that Danielle speaks to here. In the last poll, 89% of Republicans last month said that they approved the job Trump was doing. In this poll, it's 84%. Okay. Oh, that's actually a jump.

It's down five points. It's within the margin of error. It's a slight movement downward. But it's still 84%. It's still pretty robust. It's higher than where Biden was among Democrats when he was in office. And, you know, I think that when we step back here, for the most part, Republicans are sticking with Trump.

And there's a reason for that. When we talk to voters, and I spoke to a professor of social. This Week, who's written a book about the Tea Party and MAGA. And he said that essentially, you know, Republicans, MAGA, they see this as an existential battle between good and evil. And that's going to go far beyond something like whether or not tariffs are impacting their bottom line. And President Trump held a rally last week in Pennsylvania. This Friday, he's holding a rally in North Carolina, another swing state, a state where there is a Senate race. And he is, according to the White House, attempting to.

make President Trump sort of a central character in the midterms because if he's not on the ballot, things don't do well. But one thing that has been fascinating to me this week is that he already appears to be distancing himself from the midterms from the rest of his party. And he did this sit down interview with the Wall Street Journal where he says, quote, I've created the greatest economy in history, but it may take people a while to figure these things out. And then he goes on to say, I cannot tell you how that's going to equate to the voter. All I can do is do my job. And it doesn't really matter to him politically that much. I mean, he wants to maintain the House, certainly, but he's not going to be on the ballot again. He's barred from doing so in 2028.

So for the most part, this is a legacy check for Trump. He's going to start looking back on what he's accomplished as president and where he stands as a historical president. All right, we're going to leave it there. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm going to lobby for a shorter title. Didn't you lobby for this long title? No. Domenico Montanaro expert. Yes.