(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump has started vacillating between telling Americans to be patient in the face of bad economic news and blaming his predecessor for it, leaving him vulnerable to losing the support of voters who elected him to improve the nation’s economy.
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Since he started imposing sweeping tariffs that have roiled global financial markets and caused consumer confidence to plummet, Trump has been preaching patience and insisting that any short-term pain will be worth the long-term improvement and return to a “golden age” for the US.
But when Wednesday’s first quarter GDP report showed that the US economy contracted at the start of the year largely because of a monumental surge of imports to get ahead of the tariffs, Trump and the White House pointed fingers at former President Joe Biden.
“You probably saw some numbers today,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday. “And I have to start off by saying that’s Biden. That’s not Trump.”
As he celebrates what he’s calling the best 100 first days of any administration, the president’s allies and critics alike concede that his actions to reshape the global economy — especially with the deployment of tariffs — at least gives the perception that the economy is now fully his and not Biden’s. The next temperature-check looms Friday, with the April jobs report.
Political Risk
There is a segment of Trump’s voting coalition that is willing to give him time for his policies to work and will continue to support him no matter how gloomy the economic news gets, said Sarah Longwell, who publishes The Bulwark, an anti-Trump website, and conducts focus groups with voters.
Yet Trump risks losing the support of Americans — especially those who backed him after supporting Biden — who believe that he and other Republicans have the business background and know-how to keep promises to lower prices and improve the economy, she said.
“Not only is he vulnerable just in terms of the impatience of a certain section of voters, but he is also vulnerable in that it pierces the heart of the central mythology around Trump — and to some degree the Republican Party,” Longwell added.
Some polls show Trump has already starting to lose support on his handling of the economy. A Pew Research Center survey showed most US adults disapprove of the major actions of his first 100 days: tariff increases, cuts to federal agencies, and ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
