Many Americans are not buying Donald Trump’s sales pitch on tariffs a University of Massachusetts national poll found. Fully 73 percent of voters think Trump’s tariffs will result in higher prices for goods and services and rate the economy under Trump as only “fair” or “poor.” At the same time a large majority of respondents say administration’s policies are on the wrong track.
The study, conducted by University of Massachusetts researchers on the Amherst campus found that Trump’s handling of the country’s economy during his first 100 days in office are not going as well as he had hoped or anywhere as well as he brags.
“It is three months into Donald Trump’s presidency and Americans are still waiting for evidence of the economic good times he promised on the campaign trail,” said Tatishe Nteta, director of the study and provost professor of political science at UMass. “Today, prices remain high, the stock market has lost trillions of dollars in value, and economists are warning of an impending recession. Given the totality of this economic bad news, it is no surprise that American confidence in the economy is low.”
The study was conducted between April 9-12 and included 1,000 respondents across the country. It found that only 30 percent of American men said the economy is “excellent” or “good,” with only 5 percent saying it is “excellent.” Fully 70 percent rated the economy as “fair” or “poor.” Those numbers are down from a similar survey conducted under President Jor Biden in October 2024. That study found that 32 percent of respondents were happy with the economy, while 68 percent were not.
In the current study, women were more negative about the trump handling of the economy. According to the survey, only 21 percent of women are happy with the economy while 79 percent rated it as “fair” or “poor.”
“Women especially believe that the country is going in the wrong direction,” professor Raymond La Raja said. “Fifty-nine percent feel this way, which is 11 points more than men who believe that country is headed the wrong way (48%)”
Breakouts of nonwhite voters found that Black and brown voters are even more unhappy with the economy. La Raja said 67 percent of Black voters and 59 percent of Latinos think the country is going the wrong way.
“Some estimates indicate that Trump won roughly 45 percent of the Latino vote, so the fact that so many of them are dissatisfied with the direction of the country raises questions about whether they will stay in the Republican camp going forward,” he said.
The UMass study finds that slightly more than one-third of voters are happy with Trump’s performance with 35 percent saying he is on the right track, while 54 percent say he is not. Eleven percent of the respondents are not sure how well he is doing.
Americans feel Trump’s use of tariffs to try to revitalize manufacturing in the United States isn’t very popular, the study found. Fully 73 percent of those polled feel that the tariffs imposed on foreign imports will drive up prices on goods and services for the American consumer. However, just 41 percent of respondents felt it might have a positive effect on manufacturing.
“For decades, Trump has been a proponent of tariffs as a means to create jobs, lower prices and increase wages,” Nteta said. “In the aftermath of his changes to the nation’s tariff policies, he and his advisors have made the claim that increased tariffs on the nation’s trade partners will jumpstart the nation’s stagnant economy and make the nation wealthy once again. … Americans across gender, generational, educational, class and racial groups do not seem to be buying what the Trump administration is selling with a large majority of Americans (73%) believing that tariffs will increase the costs of goods and services.”
Nteta noted that study respondents seemed to like the idea that tariffs would help stimulate manufacturing in the country (43%) and perhaps increase the number of jobs available. However, it appears that while Americans like the idea of more stateside manufacturing, not many want to work in those factories.
According to Fortune Magazine, while 80 percent of polled Americans said the country would be better off with more domestic manufacturing, only 25 percent feel they would be better off working in those factories. The magazine said in its April edition that American manufacturers are having a hard time hiring workers, with more than 500,000 positions open in the country’s factories.
Even in a polarized America, most survey respondents disagree with the way Donald Trump is trying to use the power of the presidency. As the Trump administration tries to punish those who disagree with him or his policies, Americans are squeamish about how he is trying to use the levers of power. Seventy percent of respondents think his attempts to punish his political opponents fall under abnormal politics, as does using his position to enrich himself and his cronies, using his power to attack media outlets that criticize him, challenging the legitimacy of elections, seeking impeachment of judges who rule against him, and pardoning of family members.
Most people feel that endorsing like-minded candidates, using their voice to boost support for their policies and raising campaign funds are perfectly normal.
Americans acknowledge that they are watching as the checks and balances baked into the Constitution erode under the Trump administration, the survey showed, with 59 percent of respondents saying the Constitutional foundation of America is not working well. Another 35 percent of respondents say are not working too well and 24 percent say they are not working at all.
“The very strong implication, bolstered by other results from our poll indicating that Americans are worried about the erosion of their civil liberties, is that many Americans fear that the presidency has accumulated too much power and that Congress and the federal courts are not doing enough to check presidential powers,” professor Jesse Rhodes said. He is a co-director of the poll.
“While 58 percent of Americans believe that if the president refuses to comply with a Supreme Court ruling, Congress should impeach, convict and remove the president from office, there are sharp partisan divisions on this matter,” Rhodes said. “Democrats overwhelmingly support this sentiment (87%), but only about a quarter of Republicans (27%) do. In the current context, this sharp partisan divide increases the likelihood of constitutional crises in which the president defies the court and Congress is unwilling, or unable, to check this assertion of power.”