A new poll indicates that most Americans are pessimistic about the next four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, and are particularly upset with his failure so far to lower the costs of consumer goods — a key promise during his 2024 campaign.
The CNN/SSRS poll published this week found that 55 percent of Americans believe Trump “hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems” in his first month as president. When it comes to reducing consumer prices, 62 percent of Americans believe Trump hasn’t “gone far enough” to achieve that goal, with only 27 percent saying his actions thus far have been “about right,” and 11 percent saying he’s “gone too far.”
Overall, Trump has a net -5 percent approval rating, with 52 percent saying they disapprove of his work as president so far and 47 percent saying they approve. Fifty-four percent of Americans also say they are either “pessimistic” or “afraid” regarding the rest of Trump’s tenure — a 6-point increase from when the question was asked in December.
Meanwhile, prices for many consumer goods have continued to rise since Trump took office. Since January, costs for several grocery items have gone up, with an 18 percent increase on eggs and an 11.8 percent increase on wheat, for example.
Trump made rising costs a staple of his campaign speeches in 2024, repeatedly vowing that prices would “come down fast” if he were elected.
In December, however, Trump tempered that promise, stating that it’s “hard to bring things down once [prices go] up.”
Trump has focused far less on consumer costs since taking office. Instead, he’s spent his presidency thus far allowing the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (led by billionaire and Trump campaign financier Elon Musk) to rip through the federal government, firing workers and freezing funding to programs and grants millions of Americans rely on. Trump has also issued executive orders attacking transgender people, attempting to rewrite the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause, eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion goals and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” to name a few.
Trump’s executive order on bringing prices down asks department heads to find potential savings through the elimination of regulations, with the only requirement in that order being a monthly report from those departments.
Even in interviews with right-wing media, Trump has avoided providing answers on when consumers could start to see prices go down under his watch.
“When do you think families would be able to feel prices going down?” Fox News’s Bret Baier asked Trump earlier this month.
“I think we’re going to become a rich — look, we’re not that rich right now, we owe $36 trillion,” Trump said, responding by talking about national debt instead of consumer costs.
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