Donald Trump is not making America feel great again.
Nine months into the second Trump administration, Americans are feeling pretty crummy. More than half – 53% – believe the economy is worsening, according to the latest survey conducted by Harris for the Guardian. That’s just slightly better than the 58% who thought it was going downhill in late April, when financial markets were still reeling from the president’s “liberation day” tariffs. About 60% think the cost of living has gotten worse since the start of the year; 47% say the job market is worse.
There is a partisan bias to responses, of course. Only 24% of Republicans think the economy is deteriorating, compared with 60% of independents and 67% of Democrats. But there are ominous signs that the bad vibes are seeping into the bloodstream of the Maga base. Half of rural Americans, who voted for Trump by the stupendous margin of 69% to 29% last November, have become more pessimistic about the state of the economy since the start of the summer.
Bad vibes are starting to pollute their aspirations. More than a third (38%) of rural Americans say they are more pessimistic about their ability to achieve the American dream than they were a few months ago, while only 25% are more optimistic. By contrast, urban Americans – who, according to Trump, should be cowering under their beds, desperately awaiting the national guard to rescue their cities from crime and squalor – have become more optimistic than pessimistic by a margin of 41% to 28%.
Pessimism is also beating optimism by 38% to 26% among Americans with less than a four-year college degree, another bastion of the Maga base, who voted for the president by a margin of 56% to 42%. Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree are feeling sunnier: 43% report more optimism and only 26% more pessimism about their odds.
The Guardian’s polling is consistent with other sources, such as the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index – which shows a sharp deterioration since the beginning of the year. It also poses somewhat of a conundrum, for American gloom is in tension with Americans’ immediate economic reality.
Though it has slowed somewhat from last year, the US economy is growing at a steady clip. While somewhat higher than last year, the unemployment rate still remains just slightly over 4%, near its historical lows.
The sharpest contrast is that between Americans’ pessimism and the blistering performance of the stock market. Despite Trump’s destabilizing effect on financial markets, the S&P 500 is up by about 13% this year, driven by the surge in investment in and enthusiasm over artificial intelligence (AI). This is providing a healthy boost to household balance sheets. Still, 37% of respondents to the Guardian poll reported that their financial security was getting worse, while only 25% said it was getting better.
Some commentators suggest the disconnect between a tech-driven stock market boom and Americans’ financial gloom might be due to the nature of the technology driving it. During the dotcom boom, the previous era of tech-powered financial extravagance, people were excited about all the new things the internet would bring about. Today the message from Silicon Valley to the great unwashed is that AI is coming for all our jobs, and perhaps human civilization itself.
I would argue for more mundane explanations. To begin with, what prosperity we see is driven by a very narrow set of companies – seven, to be precise – which are investing hand over fist to develop ever more powerful AI models. Beyond these seven, business investment is weak. While unemployment has not risen, employment has barely grown in the last few months.
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Then there’s Trump. His erratic policymaking has delivered powerful blows to salient parts of the economy. China has responded to the barrage of American tariffs by cutting off access to rare earth minerals and sharply curtailing its purchases of soybeans from the US, hurting farmers across the midwest. Moreover, Trump’s own Department of Labor is warning that the crackdown on immigration is creating a labor crunch in the fields that threatens the food supply.
Beyond the policies, Trump’s peculiar affinity for stoking indignation and resentment surely cannot help. Not a day passes that the president fails to convince his fellow citizens they are living through hell: foreign countries are abusing Americans by selling them cheap stuff. Migrant workers are bringing desolation to their communities. DEI. policies and liberal universities are brainwashing them. Democratic-run cities, meaning most of them, are cesspits of crime. And the economy is being destroyed by a recalcitrant Fed that doesn’t do the president’s bidding.
One might expect a rational politician who promised to shut down the US border would take a victory lap and offer some happy talk about his success at slashing the number of immigrants to a historical low. (A sane politician might de-emphasize the fight against immigration: only 11% of Americans think immigration amounts to the biggest risk to the economy, according to the Guardian poll. That’s fewer even than the 12% who believe income inequality is the top threat.)
That wouldn’t fit Trump’s style, though. He must keep ratcheting up the heat, repeatedly claiming the United States is under siege by murderous people from abroad. He is sending the national guard on to the streets of Democratic cities and threatening more military deployments on American soil. Given the mood in the air, one might forgive the average American for taking a grim view.
