Trump has forgotten why he won in 2024

For years, voters believed that, despite all of President Donald Trump’s chaos and controversies, he’d still do a good job with the economy.

Not anymore.

Trump’s economic approval numbers hit new all-time lows across both his terms this month in polling from both CNBC and Quinnipiac University. CNBC, which polled adults, found his net approval on the economy was minus 13 points. Quinnipiac, polling registered voters, found it to be minus 19 points.

Specifically, voters are most angry about a particular problem: inflation and high prices.

A poll last week from the Economist and YouGov tested Trump’s approval on several issues and found that while he was underwater on several, his net approval on “inflation/prices” was the worst of all: a whopping minus 34 points. (Thirty percent of adults approved of his handling of inflation/prices, while 64 percent disapproved.)

Indeed, despite winning the 2024 election in large part due to voters’ anger at high inflation under President Joe Biden, a main practical effect of Trump’s economic agenda is to drive consumer prices higher, by slapping tariffs on imports from foreign nations.

Though Trump at times has acknowledged that inflation was a main reason he won, at other times — such as in unscripted remarks after his inauguration address — he’s expressed some doubt about how important it really is. “They all said inflation was the number one issue. I disagree,” Trump said then, adding he thought it was immigration instead. He’s since governed accordingly.

Occasionally, Trump takes an interest in trying to lower prices for a particular sector. In a TruthSocial post last week defending his plan to import more beef from Argentina, he asserted that US ranchers “have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also!”

But the bigger picture is that, with his tariffs, plus his efforts to drive the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and his massive push to deport unauthorized immigrant workers, Trump’s agenda seems focused not on lowering prices but on raising them.

So it’s no surprise that voters weary of such high prices are increasingly blaming Trump. Indeed, in many ways, the state of the economy is still quite similar to how it was when Biden was president — the economy that Trump called a disaster back when he was campaigning.

Trump’s polling on the economy this year marks a reversal of a longtime strength for him.

Throughout his first term, voters — including many voters who disapproved of Trump generally — continued to think he was doing a good job on the economy.

Pew Research’s polling showed that, in Trump’s first term (before the pandemic), well over half the public thought the economy was in good or excellent shape. This included the vast majority of Republicans, but also many Democrats. Indeed, many theorized that the economy’s strength was the main reason Trump’s support didn’t fully collapse.

Now, though, it’s the reverse: Trump’s overall approval rating is typically better than his dismal rating on the economy. For instance, the RealClearPolitics poll averages show Trump’s net approval overall at negative 7 points, and his approval on the economy at negative 13.4

Pew’s polling now shows that just 26 percent of the public thinks the economy is in good or excellent shape. In contrast to Trump’s first term, even many Republicans don’t think the economy is doing well.

The catch is that the loss of Trump’s reputation on the economy did not prove to be the key to sinking him politically. Pollsters differ on just how bad his approval ratings are, but most still show that he is more popular among the public now than he was at this point in his first term. (The Economist/YouGov poll recently showed him hitting an all-time low, but for now, it is an outlier.)

Pew’s finding that only 26 percent of the public thinks the economy is excellent or good looks dire for Trump. But it’s a finding that has changed little over the past few years; assessments of the economy have been stuck around there since 2023.

Now, under the hood, there’s been a shift among hardcore partisans — more Democrats and fewer Republicans said the economy was good while Biden was in office, and now they’ve traded places — but the overall effect cancels out.

So the main story may actually be how little changed Trump’s economy is from his predecessor’s.

Despite Trump’s promises to change things, and all the sturm und drang of his trade war, the Trump economy remains quite similar in many key ways to the economy of 2024.

The pluses include GDP growth, soaring stock market indices, and a relatively low unemployment rate. Last year, Biden’s defenders pointed to all these to argue that the economy was actually doing well; now, it’s Trump’s partisans doing that. (Critics argue that the stock boom may be an AI bubble, and that anxiety about the job market is increasing.)

The minuses — and the key ways the economy of the 2020s differs from the economy of Trump’s first term — are persistent high prices and high interest rates.

So it’s really no surprise that voters feel similarly about this economy as Biden’s economy; the basics, for now, still look broadly similar.

Yet Trump was elected in part because voters hated Biden’s economy and hoped Trump could bring things back to the way they were. But that’s much easier said than done — and he isn’t really even trying to do it.