President Trump has completed his second first hundred days in office. MAGA is getting almost everything it wants (or at least Executive Orders that purport to do what they want), and the results are not good.
A bevy of polls have been released to mark the presidential milestone, and they all show Trump’s approval plummeting. As you might expect, the implosion coincides closely with Trump’s vaunted “Liberation Day” kickoff of his trade war, but the Trump agenda is broadly unpopular.
An NBC News rundown of polling shows that, unsurprisingly, the economy is Trump’s weakest point, but other aspects of the Trump Administration don’t fare much better. Most think Musk and DOGE have too much power, and Americans generally oppose Trump’s attacks on DEI. Trump’s foreign policy also get poor marks from voters.
Immigration is Trump’s strongest point, but even there the polling has bad news for the Administration. Trump’s numbers are strongest on security at the southern border and deporting violent criminals, but support erodes quickly when it comes to deporting legal immigrants and illegals who have lived peacefully in the US for long periods. A growing number of Americans are thinking that Trump’s hardline on immigration is going too far.
It’s going to get worse.
The stock market has rebounded slightly as Trump has backed off from some tariffs, but the president left sky-high tariffs on China and 10 percent tariffs on most of the rest of the world. We have barely begun to experience the effects of the trade war.
China was one of our largest trading partners, but now CNBC reports that shipments from China, which make up almost half of imports into the Port of Los Angeles, are already dropping by more than a third. The abrupt decline will present a shock to the economic system as fewer imports mean fewer jobs for dockworkers and truckers. The reduction in goods will also mean fewer items on store shelves, and prices will rise due to both the direct cost of the tariffs and scarcity.
The price increases won’t be apparent everywhere, but one place consumers can see them in black and white is on Temu. The popular bargain retailer has begun adding a line item on its cost itemizations for “import charges.” One such itemization posted on social media by a self-described “Karen” complained that $31 of import fees on a $19 dress boosted the final price to $54, but the “Karen” missed the point that the fault lay with President Trump rather than with Temu.
A report that Amazon planned a similar itemization provoked a sharp attack from the White House. For now, Amazon says it does not plan to break out the tariff charges as a separate fee, but taxes on imported items will still rise regardless of how they are listed.
Declining imports are only part of the equation. Canceled orders and closing markets for US agricultural products and other exports are already causing a crisis for domestic producers with some products already experiencing declines in market value of up to 20 percent per CNBC. China was a huge market for US exports that will be impossible to replace.
It is going to get worse.
On Wednesday, the government reported that the economy contracted by 0.3 percent in the first quarter after growing by 2.4 percent in the last quarter of Joe Biden. The contraction can be attributed almost entirely to Donald Trump’s misguided policies strangling growth.
“Maybe some of this negativity is due to a rush to bring in imports before the tariffs go up, but there is simply no way for policy advisors to sugar-coat this. Growth has simply vanished,” Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds, told CNBC.
And then there is the effect of Trump’s war on immigration on the tourist industry. Economic uncertainty and the unfriendly political climate are driving a sharp decline in business for hotels, attractions, and restaurants, reports Travel And Tour World. It doesn’t help that there have been a number of horror stories from visitors to the US, such as the tale of two German teenage girls who were jailed and ultimately deported because they had not pre-booked a hotel reservation. Trump’s America is developing a reputation as an unfriendly place to visit.
At this point, even if Trump does an about face on his tariff policy, much of the damage is already done. Businesses have been unable to engage in longterm planning due to the erratic nature of Trump’s on-again/off-again trade regulations. Worse, the US has shown itself to be an undependable - even hostile - trading partner. Many of the international relationships that Trump has gleefully destroyed over the past 100 days may take decades of careful diplomatic attention to repair. Export markets that Trump is abandoning may be lost to American producers permanently.
Trump’s MAGA base has spent the last few days cheering about Trump’s “winning,” but a larger pool of voters is already souring on Trump’s ideas… or more accurately, his impulses. Republicans are not governing like they ever expect to face the voters again, but in reality, midterm elections are only 18 months away.
Although Democrats may be wandering in the wilderness at the moment, dissatisfaction with Trump will soon drive voters back in their direction. The pendulum is about to swing the other way.
That isn’t necessarily a good thing either. I’d like to have the pendulum hover around the middle for a change. I don’t want a government by the radical left any more than I want government by the fringe right.
The situation is getting ugly, and it’s going to get worse. There is going to be blowback in the form of a blue wave. We saw it in Trump’s first term, and it will most likely be bigger this time.
In his first term, Trump was largely restrained from acting on his worst impulses by adults in the room with respectable conservative pedigrees. Those restraining influences are mostly gone from the current Administration, and the few adults who are present, such as Marco Rubio, seem to have been rendered impotent in favor of the Stephen Millers, Russ Voughts, and Pam Bondis.
Trump’s second first hundred days has been a train wreck. At the risk of repeating myself, it is going to get worse before it gets better. Much of the damage, such as the harm inflicted on scientific research by DOGE cuts and firings, is invisible at this point and may not be apparent for years, but it is going to be hard for Republicans to plausibly deny responsibility for the upcoming Trump recession.
A recession is almost certainly coming. We can hope that it doesn’t get much worse than that, because it certainly could. Trump’s dithering and weakness could conceivably spark a serious war, while his economic policies could lead to a worldwide depression and famine.
An open question is how far Trump will go in using (abusing) his executive authority and Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice to blunt the will of the people as expressed through elections. The Trump Store is already selling a “Trump 2028” hat and I am far from certain that Trump will leave the White House any more willingly in 2029 than he did in 2021. Time will tell.
The best we can hope for at this point is that America will quickly elect a Congress that will rein in Trump and hold him accountable. We can also hope that the current experiment in populist authoritarianism by an incompetent celebrity will sour Americans on oligarchies and kakistocracies before we move to a full authoritarian idiocracy.
TRUMP FOR POPE: In a tweet with prophetic undertones, Lindsey Graham endorsed Trump for pope after the president told a reporter, “I’d like to be pope.”
UKRAINE DEAL: Ukraine and the US signed the long-awaited mineral deal. It was not clear whether the deal would include additional military aid.
ICE WARRANTS: A federal judge in California did not ban warrantless arrests by ICE. Per Cal Matters, the ruling bans broad sweeps but allows agents to ask for proof of citizenship with “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal or “probable cause” to believe that an illegal will flee.
“You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers,” the judge said.
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$19 for a dress, labor and materials included? How is that possible? Only if the dressmaker and the textile manufacturer are paid pennies. It that moral? I wrote a "novel" about globalization, using the trials and tribulations of a small timber town in the Pacific Northwest. Then I took the story global. Reviews are very good so I hope you'll read The Dark Side of Hunger Mountain and I look forward to hearing your comments as I move on to continuing the story this winter. T.H. PLATT, https://thedarksideofhungermountain.substack.com/
I do not shop with any firm that does not display total cost before clicking on purchase. Tariffs will most likely have only short-term significant price effects. If you do not buy it, you are not financially affected. Restaurants are learning that the hard way - and not because of tariffs. China and other nations will learn a similar lesson.
We will soon learn the extent of presidential deportation authority. I don't think it's going fast enough but I will live with whatever the Supremes rule.