Voters blame Trump for their economic woes

In a televised speech, Trump tried to turn around his affordability numbers by drawing attention to policies voters disapprove of

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President Donald Trump used a prime-time White House address on Wednesday, Dec. 17, to plead his case on the economy. He promised viewers that prices are coming down, his policies are working, and said Americans should be feeling better about the economy, based on the official statistics (many of which were manufactured).

The big problem for Trump is, of course, that few people are buying what he’s selling. In a way, the fact that the White House felt Trump needed to do this is all you need to know about how bad the affordability issue is for the president and the Republican Party.

In a new Reuters/Ipsos survey out Dec. 16, 39% of adults said they approve of Trump’s overall job performance, while only 33% approve of his handling of the economy. Even worse, just 27% approve of his handling of the cost of living. Last week, AP-NORC found the same pattern: In their December survey, 36% of Americans approved of Trump’s job as president overall, while just 31% approve of his handling of the economy.

Other recent polls have found the same. While lots of voters in Trump’s first term gave him credit for the economy, even while they didn’t like the rest of his agenda, now the dynamic is flipped. There are a lot of Republicans out there who say they like what Trump is doing on immigration or crime, but not on the economy or cost of living.

But the problem for Trump is not just that voters disapprove of how he has “handled” the economy. They also blame him for the current conditions. That’s why I think it’s unlikely his speech on Wednesday will make a big difference for his numbers. The president has the tough job not of empathizing with voters or enacting price-lowering policies, but convincing them that the policies he has claimed credit for that they do not like are actually good for them.

Today’s Chart of the Week: Americans blame Trump for their economic woes.

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Americans blame Trump for their economic woes

Trump on Wednesday night delivered an 18-minute screed from the White House, mixing attacks on Joe Biden with a rapid-fire list of accomplishments and promises. He emphasized tariffs, claimed progress on grocery and pharmaceutical prices (on which he said prices had decreased by 500%, which is mathematically impossible), and previewed what he described as a huge tax refund season driven by tax cuts and tariff revenue. The president claimed credit for a nearly $1,800 housing stipend to military families and rebranded it as a “warrior dividend“.

If you already believe Trump is turning the economy around, that message probably landed fine. But if you’re in the majority of the electorate that doesn’t approve of his economic management, the speech mostly runs into a credibility wall. The best example is on tariffs. Tariffs are a political loser, and Trump talking about them likely won’t change that.

In my August Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, 56% of U.S. adults said they opposed Trump’s tariffs while only 36% supported them. And when voters were asked to choose between protecting jobs even if prices rise versus saying higher prices aren’t worth it, a majority (54%) said the price increases aren’t worth it.

Tariffs are one of Trump’s signature economic policies. He has been boasting about them for years. But they are not popular — and when you’re giving a national address about affordability, “my plan is tariffs” is an obviously unpersuasive strategy.

And the effect of claiming credit for an unpopular policy is also apparent in the data: In our September Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, U.S. adults said Trump’s policy decisions have made the economy worse rather than better by 53% to 24% — a bit more than two-to-one.

I do a lot of polling about Trump, and I think this is probably his worst number. Yeah, sure, his approval rating is in the gutter — but this question directly measures who voters blame for their broad economic malaise. It’s Trump.

Why the blame game usually doesn’t work

The president spent a large portion of his speech on Wednesday night blaming Joe Biden for inflation, in an attempt to buffer his bad approval rating on the economy. “I inherited a mess,” he said in his opening line.

But in my estimation, it’s doubtful voters are paying enough attention to politics and causality in economic trends to attribute blame to Biden even if it were his fault (it’s not; Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell last week said excess inflation in goods is almost entirely attributable to Trump’s tariffs). If voters were that discerning, they likely would have gone softer on Democrats in 2024 (economists say excess inflation in 2022 was mostly due to COVID-induced shocks to supply chains and the labor market).

Instead, more than anything else, my theory is that voters just blame whoever is in charge. Even in scenarios where Democrats are clearly driving government outcomes — the shutdown, for instance, was directly caused by Democratic senators withholding votes to try to force a vote on expanded Obamacare subsidies — voters blame Trump for things. My September poll, for example, still found more Americans said they’d blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats. Once voters have a theory of who’s responsible, it’s hard to talk them out of it.

Affordability is a classic anti-incumbent issue. The answer to the question “who’s responsible?” is seemingly obvious to most voters, because the president is the most visible actor in the economic system (even when that leads them to assign blame to the wrong actor).

Similarly, a 27% approval rating on the cost of living is not a “misunderstanding” problem for Trump. You only get a number that low if you have very publicly screwed something up. And according to a POLITICO poll, around 40% of Trump voters say the current economic situation is at least half Trump’s fault (the other half say it’s Biden’s).

Looking at the data, I come to the conclusion that Trump is already losing the argument on the economy that he made on Wednesday night. Giving a speech on national TV where you yell about price statistics (some of which, like a 500% decrease in prescription drugs, are impossible) doesn’t help shift blame away from him.

The single best way for Trump to fix his numbers on the economy would be to stop screwing around with the economy. (Anybody want to buy a bridge to Brooklyn?)

Two quick takes from political science

Writing this article has reminded me of two findings in political science.

First, this was a textbook attempt at what Samuel Kernell called “going public”: bypassing bargaining and persuasion inside Washington by appealing directly to the mass public in hopes of generating pressure on elite actors. In this case, I think the elites he’s trying to influence are in the media and GOP politics.

The trouble is that “going public” tends to work best when a president is popular on the issue on which they are appealing to the public. If your cost-of-living approval is 27%, you don’t have a whole lot of leverage.

Then, I was thinking of the efficacy of Trump’s lies. Can he win the public back by shouting mostly fake economic statistics at them? Let’s say he does: How long can he hold onto them?

One study of public opinion toward wars suggests that presidents can shape opinions early on in a crisis, but the information tends to catch up with them. Trump, in other words, can only bullshit for so long.

It seems he has reached his limit.

For these reasons, I’d bet Trump’s speech Wednesday night doesn’t move his numbers. It mostly just reminded people what — or who — the problem is.