Trump Shifts His Own Vibe

By Rich Lowry on Apr 24, 2025

The vibe around President Trump's second term has shifted, and it's all his doing.

The president entered office with a bit of a wind at his back. His polling was better than the first time around, protestors weren't in the streets, and federal investigators weren't after him. The GOP was more united than in 2016, and business leaders wanted to work with him, while the culture was generally heading in an anti-woke direction.

Now, though, his polling is in a marked decline. His job approval rating is sliding. Depending on what poll you believe, it's down to 44% (Fox News), 40% (Pew Research) or 42% (Reuters). According to RealClearPolitics, his average approval rating was about 50% when he took office and is 46% now.

It's not hard to discern the root of the discontent. In the Fox News poll, just 38% approve of Trump on the economy. On tariffs and inflation, the numbers are almost 2-1 against him; 33 approve and 59% disapprove on inflation, while it's 33-58 on tariffs.

Pew Research found 45% were confident in his ability to handle the economy, down from 59% after his election, and lower than in his first term in 2019 and 2020.

Via his snap imposition of sweeping tariffs, Trump in short order took a traditional strength that could see him through any controversy, or counterbalance any vulnerability, and at least vitiated it and perhaps made it a weakness.

It's hard to think of another example of a president changing the momentum of his administration from positive to negative so quickly and decisively. Trump did it literally in a matter of days.

Usually, presidencies are rocked by events -- a hostage crisis, a war gone wrong, uncontrolled inflation. Here, nothing was done to Trump; he did it to himself. He was the event.

This wasn't him getting denied, either by more cautious advisers or a recalcitrant Congress. He hasn't been sabotaged by the Deep State. No, he got exactly what he wanted, with a couple of strokes of his pen.

The problem is that Trump didn't run in 2024 on economic dislocation, business uncertainty, higher prices or pain for manufacturers. People didn't want any of these things and, understandably, don't like them.

It's true that he promised tariffs, although all the potential downsides were ignored or minimized. No one could be certain whether he was truly talking of tariffs on the scale of those he imposed on Liberation Day -- shocking and unsustainable -- or those of his first term, which were much smaller and less disruptive.

Listening to him during the campaign and his Inaugural Address, you'd have thought he promised a Golden Age starting on Day One. Instead, his message has shifted to the notion that the sunny uplands are off somewhere in the future, after we work through all the gut-wrenching turmoil. In other words, the Golden Age is coming, but, in the meantime, stock up on toilet paper.

Trump's other numbers aren't looking so great, either. The Fox News poll has him at 40% approve and 54% disapprove on foreign policy. Here, too, he's been the master of his own fate. Canada, Mexico and Denmark didn't pick fights with him; he created them out of nothing. The overpromising on a Ukraine peace deal -- and retaking the Panama Canal -- can't be helping, either.

Defenders of Trump's unorthodox way of doing business will often say that he's a "disrupter," meaning it as a compliment. But what he's been disrupting lately is his own presidency. His splashy tariff announcements, rapid reversals and sense of mystery where he's headed next all have real-world consequences on businesses, consumers and allied nations, and none of it is redounding to his political benefit.

The good news is that having created this situation of his own volition, he can undo most of it if he reverses field on the tariffs. In the meantime, the vibe has definitely changed.

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(Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry)