Inflation remains the top issue for voters as President Donald Trump enters his third month in office, according to the latest data in a Fox News poll showing 27 percent saying inflation and prices are definitely still the top issue, a consistent result that was also seen in the 2024 election.
That cuts across party lines, with 32 percent of Republicans, 27 percent of independents and 21 percent of Democrats saying inflation was the top issue. And across almost every single ethnic and age demographic with few exceptions, inflation remains the top issue.
After inflation, it’s the economy and jobs, at 16 percent.
The result comes as President Trump, although having his highest overall approval rating ever in a Fox poll at 49 percent, on inflation, 56 percent disapprove of Trump, by far his — and America’s — weakest issue, even as he inherited the mess from former President Joe Biden. That includes 20 percent disapproval among Republicans and 69 percent disapproval from independents.
But Biden had problems when he was entering office, too, as the economy had just come out of the 2020 Covid economic lockdowns recession. He started positive, too, but was underwater in approval ratings by August 2021 prior to the botched military withdrawal from Afghanistan, thanks in large part to consumer inflation, which by that time had already reached an annual rate of 5.3 percent.
Consumer inflation reached 7.5 percent by Jan. 2022 before Russia invaded Ukraine, and peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022. By then Biden’s average disapproval rating was over 56 percent.
Biden never recovered. It was a majority killer, and proved fatal to his own reelection bid as he left the race, with former Vice President Kamala Harris running in his stead, but to no avail, as Trump was able to ride dissatisfaction with Democrats to victory in November 2024.
The lesson is every election is always a referendum of the incumbents. Whatever took down Biden could take down Trump and his party, too. Just ask Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, whose parties all suffered similar fates.
One difference is that being in his second term, Trump cannot run for office again, but the impacts politically of the economy will almost certainly be felt by Congressional Republicans in the 2026 midterms and then again when Republicans name a successor to Trump in 2028 for president.
The good news for Trump and Republicans is that while during Biden’s term inflation was already outpacing average weekly earnings by April 2021, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, a condition that persisted all the way until June 2023 — two years is an eternity in politics, and by then, Biden’s fate as a one-term president had already likely been sealed — so far during the first two months of Trump’s second term, earnings are still outpacing inflation, with consumer prices appearing to continue cooling.
Over time, therefore, as purchasing power continues to increase, public attitudes should continue to improve. Given enough time, it is possible Biden and Democrats could have pulled out of the tail spin, too, but we’ll never know the counterfactual.
For now, Trump is more or less even in approval, but that won’t last forever. He is burning through a lot of political capital at the moment and taking a beating not just in the press but also on social media. Voters are holding strong on key Trump issues like the border and immigration, but the political phalanx is not impervious.
Any disapproval on the broader economy will be determinative, and here, the actual economic numbers matter — a lot.
Another plus side to all this, although it might appear counterintuitive. President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs go into effect on April 2, the announcements of which have led to shaky equities markets that are moving into correction as the U.S. dollar has strengthened. But so too are commodities markets and prices — which feed into producer and ultimately consumer prices — are also cooling.
Although prices are marked differently on stock markets as a function of market caps whereas commodities are more so driven by supply and demand, commodities prices over history have proven to be just as sensitive to overall economic conditions and any cooling in overall capital markets. In recent years, sometimes run-ups in commodities prices were preceded by big stock market booms, and drops in commodities prices were preceded by big market selloffs.
In short, for a variety of reasons — trade partners tend to weaken their currencies as a competitive devaluation to boost exports, leading to a relatively stronger U.S. dollar, which usually results in capital shifting from stocks to bonds — President Trump’s tariffs appear to bringing prices down, not up.
The inverse relationship with the dollar holds up with commodities, too, with a strong dollar correlating with lower commodities prices and a weak dollar correlating to higher commodities prices.
Want to stop the inflation? Seems like a strong dollar is the ticket.
The timing could be impeccable, insofar as a recession might have been on the way ever since peak inflation in 2022, which would also bring prices down. Democrats’ assumption that tariffs make prices go up seems to have a fundamental flaw in that core prices are still being set on the publicly traded exchanges. If tariffs have a near-term spooking effect, that will feedback ultimately into commodities prices that set producer and consumer prices.
Now an overall economic slowdown or recession obviously carries its own set of issues including rising unemployment, but those storms have been weathered by White House incumbents before: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all had recessions either start or were ongoing in their first terms, and all four went on to get reelected relatively easily.
The lesson there could be to just rip the band-aid off. Killing inflation is job number one, Mr. President.
Robert Romano is the Executive Director of Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
