There's no doubt that President Donald Trump's chaotic tariff regime rocked Wall Street. But a new poll shows that the bad vibes extend well outside the stock exchange, as Trumpian uncertainty hangs over Main Street.
A CBS/YouGov poll shared earlier this week found that a majority of Americans believe the economy is backsliding in the early days of Trump 2.0. 53% of respondents told pollsters that they believe the economy is getting worse under Donald Trump and a majority of Americans expected the economy to slow or enter a recession in the next year.
56% of respondents said they disapproved of Trump's handling of the economy, up from 49% in March. Nearly 60% of those polled said they opposed new tariffs on U.S. imports. 65% of Americans said they expect the tariffs to make things worse in the short term and 42% expected the duties to have a negative impact in the long term. Compare that to just 8% of respondents who said tariffs would improve the economy immediately and 34% who thought they would have a positive effect given time.
CNN data analyst Harry Enten called the results "the worst set of polling data that Donald Trump has had in his entire second term as president."
"The majority of Americans think that the economy is getting worse," Enten said. "It’s an 11-point jump from November to now, and of course Donald Trump won the 2024 election because he promised to fix the economy."
The polling data also showed that the consensus around who to blame for a lackluster economy had shifted, with most respondents blaming the current president for the first time this term.
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