President Donald Trump is traveling to an economically struggling North Carolina city Friday, expected to make his case for the American economy under his leadership, as consumers remain gloomy.
The speech in Rocky Mount also comes at a key political moment. Trump can’t run for a third term in office. But the fast-approaching 2026 elections will determine whether Republicans keep control of Congress for the final two years of his presidency, or if Democrats are able to take power and block Trump from further enacting his agenda. North Carolina has a key U.S. Senate race.
In a nationally televised speech Wednesday, Trump urged Americans to keep their confidence in him as he painted a rosy picture of the state of the U.S. economy.
“When I took office, I inherited a mess,” he said in a speech that contained themes expected to be repeated in Rocky Mount. “And I’m fixing it.”
He added in a statement Thursday: “America is trending towards a historic economic boom.”
But consumers aren’t so sure. A Fox News poll released Wednesday found 72% of Americans hold a negative view of the national economy, and just 11% believe their personal economic outlook is improving.
In 2024, Trump and other Republicans castigated former Democratic President Joe Biden for high inflation and amped-up government spending, promising that returning Trump to office would reverse both. North Carolina voters bought in, supporting Trump last year with 50.9% of the vote, his best performance yet in the Tar Heel state.
Yet inflation has continued rising. And the nation’s debt ballooned further when he signed his signature legislation into law this summer: Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is expected to add $3.4 trillion more to the national deficit over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“Trump promised to lower costs for North Carolina families on Day One, but he’s done the opposite,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin told WRAL in a statement. “Trump has spent his first year wining and dining CEOs and billionaires while skyrocketing costs, killing jobs, steering our economy toward recession, and kicking millions of Americans off their health care.”
Trump and other GOP allies have claimed that prices are down. But fact-checkers including WRAL partner PolitiFact North Carolina have shown their statements about falling gas prices and Thanksgiving turkey costs, for example, are false.
In April, just months into his second term, a poll by Elon University showed 80% of North Carolina voters believed that Trump’s tariffs on most imported goods will make things cost more. Some voters — including most Republicans — told the Elon pollsters at the time that it was a cost they were willing to bear, trusting in Trump’s promises that tariffs would revive American manufacturing and help the economy in the long-run.
But in recent months, newer polls from Elon show, polling has only gotten worse for Trump. One Elon poll, conducted in late September and early October, showed 39% approval of Trump’s performance in office and 50% disapproval. The remaining 10% were unsure.
That poll sampled only voters in North Carolina. This week, Elon released another poll, which sampled voters and nonvoters in North Carolina. It found that 35% approve of Trump’s job performance, 51% disapprove and 14% aren’t sure.
Jason Husser, who leads the Elon University Poll, said the results make sense. Part of Trump’s political strength is his ability to win independents, Husser said. But independent voters are also happy to change their minds.
“[Trump’s] coalition doesn’t look like a normal major party coalition,” Husser said in an interview. “He brings in independents, particularly when he’s an outside candidate fighting the system. And many of those independents are fairly fickle supporters. Many of them will turn against President Trump when things aren’t going great. And right now, many of them are telling pollsters that the economy — in particular, inflation — is really painful to them.”
Trump, for his part, is doubling down on tariffs. He recently announced the government would spend $12 billion bailing out American farmers hurt by his tariffs and broader trade wars. And in Wednesday’s speech he called tariffs “my favorite word.”
Rocky Mount residents will likely be keen to hear Trump’s take on the economy — especially after suffering setbacks in recent months. Rocky Mount’s unemployment rate was 5.1% in September, up from 4.5% a year earlier, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The state’s unemployment rate rose to 3.7%, up from 3.2%, during that time.
And the city lost a major economic development project in recent months — one that once promised more than 1,000 jobs and more than $1 billion in new investment. Natron Energy’s plans for that new battery factory failed when the company went out of business — largely because the current administration didn’t deliver on federal support promised from the previous administration, state officials said.
“The challenge for us is when we find that the administration is creating somewhat of an unstable environment,” North Carolina Secretary of Commerce Lee Lilley said in an interview with WRAL.
2026 Congressional races
Trump’s visit isn’t a campaign rally but rather an official White House stop. However, the decision to visit North Carolina, and specifically Rocky Mount, has clear political implications.
North Carolina is expected to be home to one of the country’s most important U.S. Senate races next year. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is resigning, under political pressure from Trump, and Trump’s favored pick to replace him — former national Republican Party boss Michael Whatley — was the first to announce Trump’s visit.
Rocky Mount straddles Nash and Edgecombe counties. Nash County is the home of former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who’s running to replace Tillis as well. Cooper won election in 2016 and 2020 in part by convincing Trump supporters in rural areas like Rocky Mount to vote for him for governor — a factor Republicans will need to counter if they want to hold onto Tillis’ seat.
The city is also part of North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, where voters last year supported Trump but also sent U.S. Rep. Don Davis, a moderate Democrat, to the U.S. House of Representatives. A newly redrawn map turned the district even more Republican leaning, as Trump leaned on Republican leaders in the state legislature to draw new congressional districts that would make it harder for Davis to win reelection.
Many Republicans are running in the GOP to take on Davis, and Trump hasn’t made an endorsement yet. Friday’s event could give some of those hopefuls a rare opportunity to try getting face time with the president as they seek his support.