Economy Is the Top Issue in November Midterms... Trump Tariffs Face Backlash [Nov. 3 Midterms: America’s Choice] (2)

[Financial News] A recent poll by U.S. polling organization Pew Research Center found that the largest share of respondents, 84%, said the economy would be the top issue in next month’s midterm elections. In a survey by the same organization just before the 2024 presidential election, the economy (81%) was also the issue most frequently cited. Having held the Democratic administration accountable over the economy at the time, U.S. voters are set to do the same to the Republican administration in this election.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump pointed to inflation during former President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.’s term and promised to bring prices down by imposing tariffs and easing regulations. But inflation in the U.S. personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose from 2.6% when Trump’s second administration took office in January last year to 3.4% as of August. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), average U.S. retail prices for gasoline and diesel were $3.06 and $3.58 per gallon (3.78 liters), respectively, on January 2 last year; as of the 24th, they stood at $4.27 and $6.31, respectively. That was an increase of 39.5% and 76.3%, respectively, in about 22 months. Asked to select all the economic issues they were concerned about in a Pew Research Center survey on the 8th, 74% of the 5,062 participants cited energy costs. Next came groceries and consumer goods (73%), housing costs (66%) and finding a job (48%).
Former President Barack Obama of the Democratic Party said at a campaign rally for the midterm elections on the 24th, “Everything is more expensive now,” noting that “mortgage payments, medical bills and utility bills have all gone up, and interest rates have gone up, too.” He said, “As a former president, to be fair, sometimes plans go awry because of factors a president cannot control,” but stressed, “This time, that’s not the case. The actions of this (Trump) administration are directly responsible for rising prices.”
On the campaign trail for this election, President Trump has boasted about investments secured from foreign countries, including South Korea, and stressed that things are getting better. At a rally in Kentucky on the 17th, he said gasoline prices would fall below their previous levels once the Iran war ended soon. At a rally in Tennessee on the 10th, President Trump warned, “If the Democrats win, you will suffer a 1929-style Great Depression.”



Disappointment with President Trump is reflected in his approval ratings. According to a poll released by U.S. network CNBC on the 22nd, 65% said they disapproved of the Trump administration’s economic policies, the highest figure across both his first and second terms. A Pew Research Center survey on the 8th found that Trump’s approval rating among voters who chose him in the 2024 presidential election fell from 95% in January 2025 to 67% at the end of last month, a decline of 25 percentage points. In the same survey, 56% of respondents expected Trump’s tariff policies to harm the economy in the future, while 20% expected them to have a positive effect.
The Trump administration initially said it would add tariffs on imports, use the resulting revenue to pay down government debt and, at the same time, increase spending to stimulate the economy. President Trump stressed that companies in the U.S. and abroad would willingly lower their product costs by an amount equivalent to the tariffs in order to operate in the world’s largest consumer market, so consumers would not face higher costs.
In a report on the 6th, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, part of the U.S. Federal Reserve, analyzed 67 consumer goods categories as of February and found that prices for those goods were 2.9 percentage points higher than they would have been without tariffs. It also estimated that about 26% of the additional tariffs imposed over the roughly one-year period through February had been passed on to final consumer prices.
In the study, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York estimated that a 1-percentage-point increase in the average tariff rate would raise consumer goods prices by 0.25% about a year later. They also concluded that two-thirds of the tariff-driven price increases resulted from the tariffs themselves, while the rest stemmed from higher costs for U.S. companies using imported goods. The researchers stressed, “Tariffs have a larger and more long-lasting effect on consumer prices than would be expected from their direct effects alone.”


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