By now, it's clear that Trump’s tariff policy — which officially launched April 2 with the “Liberation Day” Rose Garden ceremony — is the biggest driver of Trump’s slumping approval ratings. The Cook Political Report PollTracker, a polling aggregator that calculates a rolling daily average of Trump’s approval rating, showed Trump’s job approval rating holding steady from March until mid-April. Since April 15, however, Trump’s net job approval rating dropped nearly seven points, including almost 8 points among independent voters.
So, what happened? Trump’s greatest asset since 2015 has been voters’ trust in his ability to strengthen the economy. How did he squander it in a matter of weeks?
Fundamentally, it seems that Trump conflated voters’ faith in his economic acumen with the belief that he had a mandate to pursue an aggressive tariff policy. Instead, what the Trump White House is learning is that voters can hold two different opinions at the same time: That Trump is generally good for the economy, and that tariffs are generally not.
This distinction was evident even before the election. Back in September
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