Voters Are Clear: This Economy Belongs to Donald Trump

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Donald Trump lives in the here and now. A performance artist at his core, the President has vamped his way through eight decades to often contradictory verdicts: bankruptcies and divorces matched with the White House and an improbable comeback.  [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

But here’s the thing about this devil-may-care approach to life: it may reward the hedonistic present but it fails to consider the inevitable future. The immediate incentive and the down-the-course payoff are often mismatched, and legacies are not launched in short order. On top of that, negative outcomes tend to linger longer in the public’s mind than the positive ones. 

That’s why the game Trump is playing with the economy is so abjectly dangerous to his legacy. When the Dow opened on Monday, it was off some 6% from Trump’s first full day in office—and that was an improvement from last month. The markets have been rocked by the sheer uncertainty being unleashed from this White House as he threatened an across-the-board tariff regime globally, targeted China with even steeper import taxes that he is now hinting may evaporate in short order, and teased trade deals as soon as this week with other nations. The tumult has left the economy in turmoil, and Americans are noticing.

Which explains why he keeps blaming Joe Biden for all of the country’s economic troubles, even as the idea that his predecessor is at fault becomes more absurd with every passing day.

Last week, after Trump’s Commerce Department released a report showing the U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year—before Trump unleashed the tariff taunts—Trump took zero responsibility. “This is Biden, and you can even say the next quarter is sort of Biden,” he said during a Cabinet meeting.

At other points, he seems content to cast blame at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, although that has not moved the needle, either. 

But the worries about a recession are growing, and Trump’s best efforts to dodge responsibility are seemingly not working. 

“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy,” he told “Meet the Press” on Friday. Asked by moderator Kristen Welker if he was willing to send the economy into a recession as part of a longer-term fix, he dodged. “Look, yeah, it’s—everything’s OK,” he said. “What we are—I said, this is a transition period. I think we’re going to do fantastically.” Asked if a recession was coming, Trump seemed indifferent: “anything can happen.”

Recessions don’t come out of nowhere. They are often the byproduct of a shaky consumer confidence and increasing anxieties, whether those sentiments are justified or not. Right now, consumer confidence is lower than even during the Great Recession, and scared consumers mean sidelined consumers. Their dollars fuel about 70 cents of every dollar in the economy, and right now they’re keeping their wallets closed.

To listen to voters, they’re putting this squarely on Trump in a way they never have before. Take the latest NPR-PBS-Marist poll: 60% of Americans said the current economic situation is a result of Trump’s policies. Compare the same survey’s results at this point in Barack Obama’s first term, when he took the whacking from just 14% of voters amid a full-blown recession.

Trump likes to cast himself as an all-powerful master of the universe, a titan who can bend reality to his whims. A masterful salesman, he has convinced legions of Americans of that false reality. But those same Americans are looking around and seeing some pretty grim truths staring them down as stocks sink, supply chains begin to falter, and prices keep going up. They’re worried and they are looking for someone to blame. If Trump wants to be the omnipotent colossus, then he also has to be the culpable party when Americans want to find a vessel for their unease. Trump wanted the big prize back. Now he has to carry it for a second term.

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