Americans' views of current economic conditions are souring recently
www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chiccr...
Inflation was higher than expected, jobs and consumer confidence lower than expected. A new American golden age is upon us!
-- Philip Bump (@pbump.com) August 15, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Trump's inflation promises may finally be catching up to him. If tariff-driven inflation is truly arriving, already low estimations of Trump's handling of prices could really plunge.
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-- New York Magazine (@nymag.com) August 15, 2025 at 5:39 PM
... Polling data has shown Trump getting consistently poor job-approval ratings for his handling of "inflation" and "prices." According to Silver Bulletin's polling averages, Trump's net approval rating on inflation is a horrendous minus 25.5 percent, and it's been below minus 20 percent since mid-June. Does this reflect anticipatory fears of the inflation we are now beginning to see? If so, it's possible such inflation has already been baked into assessments of Trump's job performance, and its actual appearance may not significantly erode his support, assuming it's limited in size.
But there's another possibility that could mean big trouble for Trump and his party heading toward the 2026 midterm elections, and Egger notes it as well:
It's remarkable to ponder the gap between this economic picture and what voters thought they'd be getting with Trump on inflation. Many Americans seem simply to have swallowed his incredibly simplistic campaign pitch of "Biden makes prices go up, Trump will make prices go down." The fact that they've kept going up even modestly so far this year has scanned as a disappointment to many. How they'll respond to Trump actively making that inflation worse in the weeks and months ahead remains to be seen, but support for his ability to handle the economy only continues to soften.
Those who focus on inflation statistics may be missing that, which also helps explain why improved inflation numbers didn't help Biden in the last two years of his presidency: Americans didn't want prices to rise more slowly, but to actually go back down to where they were before their post-pandemic spike. The fact that general price drops don't tend to happen without a recession may seem axiomatic to economists, but not to voters being sold a bill of good by Trump. Before long, he may pay dearly in political capital for that particular bit of deception.
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