| Disapprove: | 71% |
| Approve: | 29% |
* CNN/SSRS, March 6-9, 2025
WHAT THEY MEAN:
What do Americans think of the Trump administration’s tariff binge? As a point of departure, here’s the “Chapter One” pledge from last fall’s Republican party platform:
“The Republican Party will reverse the worst inflation crisis in four decades that has crushed the middle class, devastated family budgets, and pushed the dream of homeownership out of reach for millions. We will defeat inflation, tackle the cost-of-living crisis, improve fiscal sanity, restore price stability, and quickly bring down prices.”
We noted at the time that promises to cut prices and to raise tariffs – that came four notches down, in “Chapter Five” — contradict one another. (Lewis Carroll’s White Queen might happily believe six impossible things before breakfast. Alice knows they’re impossible nonetheless.) A hypothetical Trump administration, we predicted, would have to choose between them.
The actual administration now appears to have chosen. Here’s the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, telling Americans they’re wrong to care about the cost of goods, and the administration’s policy will likely bring prices up, not down:
“Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream. … [shift to mumbling voice] Can tariffs be a one-time price adjustment? Yes.”
Insights from three different sources — consumer confidence surveys, public opinion polls, and House of Representatives debate — give some sense of what Americans now believe tariffs do, whether they like the administration’s approach, and how strongly they may feel.
First, the Conference Board’s February consumer-confidence readout and the University of Michigan’s March survey find Americans expecting prices to rise and believing they know why. The Conference Board summary:
“Average 12-month inflation expectations surged from 5.2% to 6% in February. This increase likely reflected a mix of factors, including sticky inflation but also the recent jump of prices of key household staples like eggs and the expected impact of tariffs. References to inflation and prices in general continue to rank high in write-in responses, but the focus shifted towards other topics. There was a sharp increase in the mentions of trade and tariffs, back to a level unseen since 2019. Most notably, comments on the current Administration and its policies dominated the responses.”
Second, March public opinion polls suggest that Americans put more value than Mr. Bessent on cheap goods (see below for why this might be) and aren’t persuaded that tariff hikes will bring them much good in exchange. One, a CNN/SSRS poll done between March 6 and 9, asks about Mr. Trump’s handling of tariff policy. Reuters/IPSOS (March 3 to 5), meanwhile, asks about tariff increases in the abstract without mentioning Mr. Trump personally. Findings:
CNN/SSRS: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling tariffs?”
| Approve | Disapprove | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| All respondents | 39% | 61% | |
| Political independents | 29% | 71% | |
| Republicans | 80% | 20% | |
| Democrats | 6% | 93% | |
| Non-college | 41% | 59% | |
| Under 35 | 28% | 72% | |
| Over 45 | 45% | 54% | |
| Men | 39% | 60% | |
| Women | 39% | 61% | |
| Earns less than $50,000 | 38% | 62% |
Reuters/IPSOS:
| Agree | Disagree | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| “It’s a good idea to charge tariffs even if prices increase.” | 32% | 53% | |
| “When the U.S. charges tariffs, American workers come out ahead.” | 31% | 49% | |
| “Increasing tariffs will do more harm than good.” | 53% | 31% |
Both show the administration (a) nearly four fathoms “underwater,” (b) holding a core Republican vote but not persuading anybody else, and (c) losing the “swing” and “non-white working-class” voters who last fall thought Mr. Trump would at least try to “quickly bring prices down.”
Third, political-system reactions — specifically, debate last week in the House of Representatives — cast some indirect light on the intensity of feeling. House Democrats, guided by Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Greg Meeks, requested a vote last Wednesday to terminate the “emergency” declaration Mr. Trump is using to threaten tariffs on the energy, cars, groceries, home-building materials, medicines, and so on Americans buy from Canada and Mexico. Rather than defend this, their Republican counterparts dodged by writing a surreal “House Rule,” declaring the last 9½ months of 2025 to be a single “day.” Mr. Meeks:
“‘Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day.’ What? If you don’t think that makes any sense, neither do I. House Republicans are declaring that the days are no longer days and that time has literally stopped.”
It doesn’t make sense. But in the arcane ‘House Calendar world’, it does prevent a debate and avert a vote. That day’s Congressional Record reports 23 comments on tariffs by House Democrats and none by Republicans. Rule of thumb: House members have a keen sense of local reaction to issues. When they don’t want to talk about something, there’s a reason. At least for now, the administration’s choice to abandon its “bring down prices” pledge, and raise tariffs instead, doesn’t seem one many Americans like.
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
In this spirit, the Congressional Record for March 12 (pp. H1083 – H1183) records an honorable day for Rep. Meeks and House Democrats. They are right on policy, to keep costs down for hourly-wage Americans trying to manage family budgets and to oppose unprovoked attacks on America’s neighbors and friends. And they are right on principle: Congress, not the president, has authority over “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises”, and attempts by presidents to bypass this and impose tariffs by decree are fundamentally anti-Constitutional. We applaud.
Public opinion:
CNN/SSRS on Mr. Trump’s handling of tariffs, budgets, the economy in general, and more.
Reuters/IPSOS on the same topics, without attaching them personally to Trump.
Quinnipiac (March 6-10) on Mr. Trump’s approach to trade with China, Canada, and Mexico.
The Conference Board (Feb. 25) finds consumers losing confidence and worried about tariffs and their price impact.
… and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey gets similar results.
Meanwhile:
As Americans worry about price increases, retaliations against American exporters are piling up. Current status:
So far, they have chosen to use tariffs hitting American manufacturers and farmers. More inventive things with wider target ranges are ahead:
And last — Tariffs, the hedge-fund alum, and the single mom:
Back to Mr. Bessent: “Cheap goods are not the essence of the American dream.” Without wealth-bashing for its own sake, that’s kind of easy for him to say …
Tariffs are taxes on purchases of physical goods, incorporated in store prices for shoppers and in production costs for goods-using businesses like manufacturers, restaurants, farms, and building contractors. That means they’re toughest on people who spend a lot of their money on goods. Who might these people be?
The BLS’ Consumer Expenditure Survey finds that in 2023, America’s single-parent families spent 40% of their $52,462 post-tax median income on food, clothes, home furnishings, and other goods. This is twice the 20% of income that the top-decile families (median post-tax, $259,432) spent on goods. Put more directly, tariffs hit the waitressing single mom twice as hard as the law firm partner. Mr. Bessent, a hedge-fund alum whose income comes from real estate rentals, royalties, and capital gains, is an extreme case even in the top decile, probably spending closer to 1% than 20% of income on physical, tariff-able goods. So he may personally have trouble seeing why anyone would care if food and clothing prices jump.
For better analysis and policy advice, Treasury can turn to Laura Duffy’s It’s Not 1789 Anymore: Why Trump’s Backward Tariff Agenda Would Harm America. As she explains, tariffs — though a defensible choice among the bad revenue options available to 18th-century Americans, or to the present-day governments of extremely poor and/or unstable countries — are a poor form of taxation and badly wrong for modern America: can’t raise enough revenue; non-transparent; regressive and inequitable; severe downstream harm.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
