Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
.-') _ .-') _
( OO ) ) ( OO ) )
.-----. ,--./ ,--,' ,--./ ,--,'
' .--./ | \ | |\ | \ | |\
| |('-. | \| | )| \| | )
/_) |OO )| . |/ | . |/
|| |`-'| | |\ | | |\ |
(_' '--'\ | | \ | | | \ |
`-----' `--' `--' `--' `--'
lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Trump’s economy problem is threatening his entire agenda
Analysis by Aaron Blake, CNN
Updated:
12:57 PM EDT, Fri September 5, 2025
Source: CNN
President Donald Trump came into office with massive plans to overhaul
the way the US government operates and consolidate power in himself.
And he’s in implementing that vision, thanks to a cowed Congress,
timid institutions and a languid judiciary.
But there are growing signs that his entire agenda could be undercut
and his party could face massive political consequences because of his
hubris on the single most important issue to Americans: the economy.
A new Friday confirms some the worst fears about a worsening jobs
market. A brief recap:
The Trump administration has made pains to try to neutralize headlines
about these jobs numbers, including last month by to make them look
bad. (There is no evidence for this, and there are safeguards to
prevent such manipulation.) After a bad July jobs report, Trump fired
the head of BLS and now aims to replace her with .
If Trump’s past is predicate, such conspiracy theories are likely to
be revisited. But on Friday morning, there was apparently only so much
the administration could do to spin these numbers.
Trump himself took aim at Jerome Powell, re-upping a familiar attack on
the Fed Chair over his not lowering interest rates. Others acknowledged
the report wasn’t what they were hoping for.
“This jobs number was certainly a little bit of a disappointment
right now,” top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on
CNBC, while predicting some upward revisions.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer acknowledged on Fox Business that
the new report “underperformed a bit,” while emphasizing that it at
least contained some jobs gains (a very low bar, to be sure).
And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick seemed to plead for patience,
asking people to judge Trump’s jobs record not today but in 12
months.
“You look at the unemployment rate numbers today – wait until a
year from today,” Lutnick said in CNBC. “Wow. It will be amazing
numbers.”
But that’s asking a lot. People are already judging Trump’s
stewardship of the economy more negatively than ever before. And while
Trump arguably earned the benefit of the doubt when his tariffs
didn’t lead to immediate and crushing consequences, he still faces a
deeply skeptical public and potentially disastrous political
consequences.
A Quinnipiac University poll in late August showed Trump with his , in
either of his two terms: 57% disapproving to 39% approving.
pegged his economic approval rating at just 37%, after averaging 52%
in his first term. Just 29% of independents approved.
A showed Americans disapproved of Trump on the “cost of living” by
more than a 2-to-1 margin, 62-29%, and by a large margin on trade and
tariffs, 58-35%.
We’re also seeing some real cracks even in Trump’s ever-loyal base.
The Yahoo poll showed 27% of Republicans disapproved of Trump on the
cost of living. And a Pew Research Center poll last month showed of his
tariffs strategy.
All of which suggests the patience of even Trump’s loyal supporters
has already been tested. Are they really going to give him a year to
straighten it all out?
The danger for Trump is that the economic picture turns bad enough that
it sours Americans on the entire enterprise.
Trump’s power plays are largely built on acquiescence. People might
not like his methods, but they don’t necessarily want to fight him on
it. As long as these things don’t impact them directly, the backlash
is limited.
Indeed, many of Trump’s most controversial initiatives are pretty
unpopular – things like deporting people without due process, putting
troops on US soil, the Department of Government Efficiency cuts, and
Trump’s signature agenda bill that cut Medicaid. We’ve already seen
– along with, most pronouncedly, the administration’s handling of
the Jeffrey Epstein files.
But none of those issues has caused a real revolt by Congress or anyone
who could impede his agenda.
The economy is perhaps the one thing that could change that rather
quickly, and bring these readily apparent concerns about his presidency
to the fore.
Should things continue to turn sour, Trump and Co. can blame BLS data
and the Federal Reserve’s interest rates all they want. But it
won’t be difficult for Americans to trace all of it to something
that’s much easier to grasp and attach to Trump: his economy-rocking
moves to unilaterally implement huge tariffs. These are moves that he
made without consulting Congress, after all, and despite the (gently
expressed) reservations of congressional Republicans who spent decades
hailing free trade.
Trump did this despite persistent inflation that still hadn’t really
abated. He voluntarily took ownership of an already-tenuous situation
and injected it with a huge amount of uncertainty.
Trump invested gobs of political capital in this. It’s looking more
and more like a bad bet.
<- back to index
You are viewing proxied material from codevoid.de. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.