Perhaps the most telling polling of the post-election Republican debacle compares the public’s view of the economy during President Donald Trump’s first term (before COVID-19) and second.
During Trump I, the president was a +9 on the economy, even when his personal approval number was atrocious. Today, the president is at -35 on the economy.
In October 2018, Gallup’s “economic confidence poll” of American voters stood at -33. In October 2026, it was at -44.
Now, to be fair, lots of negativity was baked into polls after the Biden administration exacerbated post-COVID inflation. But it also represented a huge opportunity for a new administration.
On Inauguration Day 2025, confidence in the economy was at -19. By December 2025, months before the Iran war, American confidence in the economy was at -33.
What was the major difference? From 2017-19, Trump and Republicans implemented the kind of “Zombie Reaganism” Vice President JD Vance and his populist D.C. Praetorian Guard detest and reject.
Trump’s first-term focus was on deregulation and tax cuts, with only a few narrow, focused forays into protectionism. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the first big law of the Trump era, slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, lowered individual rates for everyone, nearly doubled the standard deduction, expanded the Child Tax Credit, and added a 20% pass-through deduction for small businesses. When it came to the economy, the administration was largely hands-off.
Affordability was a driving reason Trump was elected in 2024. But what was the first big economic policy of his second go-around? Unilaterally slapping taxes on products from virtually every country and territory in the world. The president never made his case to Congress or the electorate, which means he never had any consensus or buy-in.
Protectionism, as most economists predicted, brought red tape, corruption, corporate rent-seeking, and chaos. It was all done under the auspices of a fake emergency.
Which is why Trump’s second term ended on “Liberation Day.” You can follow the president’s approval on the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate. Trump’s popularity began to fall when word of tariffs leaked, plummeting 10 points right after “Liberation Day.” Approval clawed back 10 points while the president delayed tariffs after a market crash. When the White House finally began implementing tariffs, Trump’s numbers were in free fall.
Every other mistake, including the administration’s tragic dillydallying on Iran, only compounded the problem.
Most exit polls find that around 65% of Americans believe tariffs hurt the economy. Red or blue, states with working-class voters, Southern states, rural areas, it didn’t matter. Big majorities said the tariffs hurt their local economy. In Texas, a state that relies heavily on trade, the Associated Press found that tariffs were 44 points underwater. In Ohio, 47. In Michigan, 50.
The public’s view of protectionism reminds me of support for Medicare for All. Voters love to hear politicians championing manufacturing and promising to “bring back” jobs and save Rust Belt towns. But when they experience protectionism in real time, they sour on the economy.
Vance, a long-time economic leftist and one-time Never Trumper who expediently morphed into a Trump sycophant to win a Senate seat, seems to be under the impression that treating voters like hapless victims of Wall Street “barons” and dark secret forces is a winning message. Like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, the Vance faction believes they can socially engineer the economy to conform to their cultural vision.
Vance isn’t alone, of course. Trump named George Soros’ former right-hand man Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary and lifelong Democrat Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary. On the economy, Trump II is the most left-wing Republican administration in history.
It is difficult to excavate any positive from the shellacking Republicans took this week. But it’s likely no accident that the only state that escaped the blue wave (barely) was Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has spent two terms implementing conservative fiscal policies, including championing a property-tax relief constitutional amendment that received roughly 62% of the vote and likely drove Republican turnout.
But if Republicans get into an arms race over who can redistribute wealth better or send out more checks or prop up more dying industries or punish more corporations, voters will have an easy choice. If they want endless class war and “industrial” social engineering and state ownership of private companies, a party already exists to do all of that for them.
Which is why Vance’s brand of warmed-over progressivism has little future.
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