Americans elected President Donald Trump in hopes that he would fight inflation and boost the US economy, but as he approaches his 100th day in office, they are giving the Republican poor marks for his handling of both, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows.
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Trump has kicked off his term with an aggressive economic agenda, sparking trade wars as he slaps tariffs on major US trading partners, trying to pressure the Federal Reserve to bend to his will and setting off the worst sell-off in US financial markets since the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic five years ago.
Just 37 per cent of respondents to the six-day poll that concluded on Monday approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 42 per cent in the hours after his January 20 inauguration, when he promised to supercharge the economy and bring about a “Golden Age of America”. The reading is well below than at any point in his first term, when it ranged from the mid-40s to mid-50s.
Everything that’s supposed to be up is down, everything that’s supposed to be down is up
“You have a president who promised a golden age,” said James Pethokoukis, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “But everything that’s supposed to be up is down, everything that’s supposed to be down is up.”
Pethokoukis said the economic warning signs put pressure on Trump to reverse course on tariffs, but that even if Trump caved, the economy might not quickly bounce back amid the chaos.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted just after Trump’s inauguration, some 55 per cent of respondents said either inflation or the broader economy should be Trump’s main focus in his first 100 days in office, which run through April 30. Twenty-three per cent picked immigration.
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Three months later, three-quarters of the respondents in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll said they worried a recession was coming. Fifty-six per cent of respondents, including one in four Republicans, said Trump’s moves to shake up the economy are “too erratic”.
