U.S. high inflation, unemployment has risen, and even the president's support has fallen sharply; Trump's economic card is playing more and more like a blind box, but the result is that 55% of Americans directly hit the negative;
CNBC's latest poll shows that only 43% of people still support him on economic issues; From street protests to stock market turmoil, the economic confidence of the United States is like a deflated ball. Policies are deviated, markets are unstable, social sentiments are intensified, and various contradictions are intertwined, which has torn a hole in the economic myth of the United States.
Trump re-introduced the “reciprocal tariff” policy, claiming to fight back to a fair competitive environment for the U.S. manufacturing industry; this approach appears to be cheerful, but the reality doesn’t buy the bill. A new round of global tariff adjustments announced on April 2 directly ignite market unrest.
As a result, the prices of the originally high enterprises have risen further, the operating costs of enterprises have soared, and the stock market volatility has intensified.This "self-pressure" approach has soon caused a small rebound in the United States.
The first thing ordinary people feel is the rising cost of living; From food to building materials, from clothing to gasoline, prices are almost immune. Many business owners publicly stated that tariffs not only failed to bring orders, but also compressed profit margins.
Small factories in some places simply choose to avoid shutdowns.These changes cause people to start to question: Who is this seemingly “hard” economic policy for?
Criticism of current policies is also growing in academic and financial circles; many economists point out that this unilateral tax hike misjudges the complexity of the global supply chain and does not boost the competitiveness of the U.S. manufacturing industry, but exacerbates material shortages and inflationary pressures.
The price index rose again in August, and the unemployment data was not optimistic. This situation has caused market confidence to continue to decline, and economic uncertainty has been directly transmitted to the social level. A recent national survey showed that nearly half of Americans are pessimistic about the economic outlook over the next year.
75% of respondents have begun to worry that the economy will fall into a full-blown recession. This collective anxiety is slowly eating away the already fragile cohesion of American society. Protests have once again swept across many cities, with crowds gathering almost every week on the streets of Washington, the capital.
From the initial opposition to economic policy has gradually evolved to questioning the ability of the entire government to govern.Social issues have also intensified, and old issues such as immigration policy, fiscal cuts, racial discrimination have been brought back to the scene, forming more complex and more difficult to reconcile social contradictions.
Political change is one of the major reasons for the public’s confidence to be completely broken; a lot of people complain that the government has a slogan today and a slogan tomorrow, and that economic policies lack coherence and long-term planning.
Independent voters who once supported Trump also started to fall, with the support rate rapidly falling from 41 percent at the beginning of the year to 36 percent.
American society has gradually evolved from ideology to a real conflict at the level of life. For a country that once had a "stable middle-class" as its core, once the middle class feels insecure, the whole country's governance foundation will crack.
In the U.S. political system, the struggle between the president and Congress has become increasingly intense, and fiscal negotiations have been stuck several times, eventually leading to multiple government shutdowns; the normal political friction caused by party differences has become a "tumor" that affects the normal functioning of the country.
According to agency estimates, every time the government shuts down for a week, the national economy loses US$15 billion. Many federal employees are forced to have no pay, and countless families are under financial pressure. Military wages have been delayed, and news of civil servants applying for unemployment benefits is common.
This operation of "stopping one's own neck" has made the United States more and more unreliable in the global eye; the dispute between the Democrats and the Republicans is no longer a philosophical dispute, but instead uses the "stop" as a negotiation code. The health insurance scheme has become the focus of controversy, the Democrats adhere to the $1.5 trillion universal health insurance scheme, while the Republicans insist on cutting spending, demanding the so-called "clean bill".
This situation of non-yielding has led to frequent blockages of the state apparatus and the continuous weakening of people's trust in the system. When governance capabilities are seriously disrupted by partisan struggle, no matter how perfect economic policies are, they will be difficult to implement.
For global markets, U.S. instability means more uncertainty risks, while for China, it requires a more cautious assessment of the path of economic and trade cooperation with the United States.
The current problem facing Trump's administration is no longer a purely economic and technological problem, but a comprehensive governance challenge. The short-term operation represented by tariff policy ignores the linkage of the global economy;
Failure to manage inflation has further undermined people’s quality of life, while political struggle has escalated and governments have failed to reach consensus on key issues, leading the entire country to a state of “policy and non-implementation.”
People's trust is rapidly evaporating. Street protests and dissatisfaction in polls are all a rebound against the current ruling model. If economic governance loses social support, it will eventually be unsustainable.
Economic policy cannot be separated from the reality of people's livelihoods, nor can it be abducted by political forces. This round of economic shock in the United States, although it may bring some external market fluctuations, also provides a window to observe the global economic trend. In the context of globalization, changes in economic policy in any country can trigger a chain reaction.
When a country's policies, society and politics are seriously disconnected, any seemingly tough economic strategy will become a paper tiger. Trump wants to solve complex problems in a simple and crude way, but the result is only to make the problem more complicated.
Source of information:
CNBC (September-October 2025 poll) U.S. President Trump has a support rate of 43% on economic policies and a disapproval rate of 55%.