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My big discovery yesterday: I can’t do serious thinking and writing when jet-lagged and very tired. Whaddya know. So just a brief post this morning, before a busy day here in [country and city redacted]. I’ll be doing a full primer for Sunday but can’t promise much before then.
But here’s a bit of a preview. I noted last week that the Biden era vibecession — people feeling bad about an economy that looked good by standard measures — has persisted under Trump. In fact, public perceptions of the economy appear to be plumbing new depths.
Honestly, I’m surprised. One factor in poor economic sentiment under Biden was partisanship. People’s reported perception of the economy is strongly affected by whether their preferred party is in power:
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Source: University of Michigan
This is true for both parties, but historically Republicans have tended to cheer harder and boo louder than Democrats. So other things equal we would have expected average sentiment to improve under Trump II.
Now, things aren’t equal. Objectively, the economy is worse in important ways than it was a year ago. Still, the extent of the plunge in perceptions is remarkable.
It may be that Trump is — bear with me here — actually paying a price for telling Americans not to believe their own eyes. As I’ve written recently, it’s important not to engage in false equivalence. Biden and company told Americans that their incomes were outpacing inflation, which was true but not what people wanted to hear. Trump keeps insisting that grocery prices are way down, which is simply a lie. And people may be noticing.
The absolute absurdity of the Trump team’s efforts to explain away bad economic news may also be taking a toll. Remember when Scott Bessent was supposed to be the adult in the room? Now he’s blaming migrants taking diseased cattle with them for high beef prices.
I also wonder whether Trump’s other problems — from Epstein to the deep unpopularity of ICE’s actions — are bleeding over to economic sentiment. Political consultants like to imagine that the public makes clear distinctions between issues: “kitchen table” versus democracy versus corruption. In reality public opinion is much more of a gestalt in which bad or good feelings on different issues merge.
