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Voters are still really angry about inflation and high prices.
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.
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, and he’s governed in that vein.
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!”