Americans are expressing growing frustration with President Donald Trump’s management of the economy, according to new polling data.
The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist survey found that 57 percent of respondents disapprove of Trump’s economic management, compared with 36 percent who approve — the lowest rating on this issue across his two terms in office.
Partisan differences remain sharp: 81 percent of Republicans say Trump is doing a good job, while 91 percent of Democrats disagree. Among independents, a clearer picture emerges: 68 percent disapprove, compared with just 24 percent who approve.
Weakened support on the economy is likely contributing to the Republican president’s sagging overall approval rating, which stands at 38 percent, the worst rating recorded since he left the White House in 2021.
“This is a major problem for him,” Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, told PBS News. “When affordability is so front and center in people’s minds, that’s going to be laid at the doorstep of a chief executive.”
Other economic indicators are bleak as well.
About 70 percent of respondents — including nearly half of Republicans — said that the cost of living in their neighborhood is not affordable at all or not very affordable. In contrast, about 30 percent of respondents said the cost of living in their area is affordable, marking a 25-point drop from June.
At the same time, roughly one in three respondents said that their personal financial situation has deteriorated in 2025. About the same share expect their financial situation to get worse next year.
A majority of respondents, 52 percent, also said the U.S. is currently in a recession. And slightly more said Democrats are better equipped to manage the economy than Republicans — 37 percent versus 33 percent.
“The longer this goes on, the harder it is to get those numbers back,” Amy Walter, the editor of The Cook Political Report, told PBS News. “It becomes sort of a self-fulfilling situation. People don’t feel confident in you, and they think prices just continue to go up.”
The survey sampled 1,440 U.S. adults between December 8 and 11, and it has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.
In recent months, the state of the economy has taken center stage in political messaging on both sides of the aisle.
Democrats leveraged concerns about affordability to secure victories in key elections across the country, including in Virginia and New Jersey. In New York City, Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani won a decisive victory by promising to lower the cost of living.
In response, the White House has taken a more aggressive strategy to sell the president’s economic agenda to voters ahead of the 2026 midterms. Earlier this month, Trump delivered a speech in Pennsylvania on the subject of the economy. He stated that his sweeping tariffs have generated billions in revenue, dismissed the term affordability as a “hoax” and assured supporters that prices were beginning to fall.
In an interview with Politico, he also gave the economy an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” rating.
Democrats have accused Trump of failing to grapple with legitimate and strongly felt voter concerns about the economy.
“Last night’s speech in Pennsylvania was supposed to kick off a new messaging campaign on affordability, but all it did was expose how Donald Trump simply doesn’t get it,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said about Trump’s recent address in the Keystone State.
Some Republicans have echoed this sentiment.
“Trump is a billionaire and he’s the president of the United States,” outgoing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told CNN on Tuesday. “When he looks into a camera and says affordability is a hoax and totally just tries to make nothing out of inflation, he’s talking to Americans that are suffering and have been suffering for many years now and are having a hard time making ends meet, and so that’s not the right message.”
The administration has dismissed such concerns, though.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai told Politico earlier this month that Trump won the 2024 election “precisely because he understood just how much damage Joe Biden’s economic disaster had inflicted on American families.”
“With inflation having cooled and trillions in investments pouring in, President Trump’s agenda is indeed delivering the booming economy that Americans enjoyed during his first term” Desai added.
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