Donald Trump to address Congress amid growing pessimism about the economy
WASHINGTON ― Anxiety about the state of the economy and inflation under former President Joe Biden helped catapult President Donald Trump back to the White House.
But as he prepares to give his first joint address to Congress Tuesday night, Trump will face a nation starting to grow skeptical of his ability to achieve one of his core campaign promises ‒ lowering their cost of living.
A poll from Marist University/NPR released on the eve of Trump's address found 57% of Americans believe grocery prices will increase over the next six months, while only 17% believe they will decrease. In the same poll, 54% of Americans said the country is moving in the wrong direction, and more Americans, by a 46%-42% margin, believe Trump's direction on the economy is for the worse than for the better.
The economic concerns comes as egg prices have soared amid ongoing bird flu outbreaks. Economists also warn that tariffs on imports, which Trump is aggressively imposing, can lead to higher prices for consumers.
"Inflation is not gone, those concerns are still there, and perhaps the Trump administration has found out that inflation is not that easy to control," said Erasmus Kersting, an economics professor at the Villanova School of Business.
The White House has continued to blame the policies of the Biden administration for consumer prices that increased 3% in January from a year earlier, up from 2.9% the previous month. But the longer Trump remains in office, the more difficult it could become to pin it all on his predecessor.
And signs a jittery public on the economic outlook are mounting.
Public approval of Trump's handling of the economy dropped to 39% last month, down from 43% immediately after his inauguration, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Consumer confidence metrics dropped in February by the largest monthly margin since August 2021. Meanwhile, the U.S. household income is expected to grow by just 4.25%, down from a robust 5.5% last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and Moody’s forecasts.
"You can only tell stories for so long," Kersting said, adding that while Trump "talked the economy down" during the 2024 presidential campaign, he's now in a problematic position of talking up the economy under his watch despite the troubling metrics.
"Something like the price of eggs or rent or people's job prospects, those are things that he can't just sort of talk away. That might be something where reality comes back and actually has political consequences for him," he said.
'I WILL TELL IT LIKE IT IS,' Trump says of speech
Trump is expected to use his speech before Congress to give a full-throated defense of his first six weeks in office. It has included a barrage of executive actions designed to overwhelm his opponents, actions to close the border to migrants, new tariffs on foreign imports and an aggressive push to dismantle the federal government led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. It's unclear how much of Trump's address will be devoted to concerns about inflation and the economy.
"TOMORROW NIGHT WILL BE BIG. I WILL TELL IT LIKE IT IS!" Trump said in a social media post previewing his address.
Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur and White House senior adviser, is set to attend the joint address in what will be another public display of his enormous power in the Trump administration. Yet recent polling suggests Musk's influence and his DOGE efforts, including sweeping cuts to the federal workforce, present a risk politically for Trump.
Fifty percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Musk, the Marist/NPR poll found, compared to 39% who have a positive opinion of him. More Americans, 44%-39%, have an unfavorable than favorable opinion of DOGE. And 55% of Americans said they believe Trump's layoffs of federal workers and cuts to government funding will do more harm than good.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday defended DOGE's actions, pointing to a Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll from last month that found 76% of Americans support a "full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government.”
"President Trump has his finger on the pulse of the American public, he knows what they elected him to do, and he's committed to doing it," Leavitt said in an appearance on Fox News, adding that Trump will discuss his accomplishments "across the board" during his joint address.
Trump's tariff plans send stocks tumbling
Trump's Monday announcement that he plans to move ahead with 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico sent the stock market tumbling.
Trump has acknowledged there could be "pain" from the new tariffs on the two bordering nations but said "it will all be worth the price that must be paid."
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council in the Trump White House, said last month the combination of spending cuts and increasing the supply of goods manufactured in the U.S. will drive down inflation.
"If you have an explosion of supply and a reduction in government demand, then inflation goes way down," Hassett said, though cautioning: "We're still going to see some memory of Biden's inflation. It's not going to go away in a month."
Trump's critics, meanwhile, are seizing on the signs of economic unrest.
"We’re about less than two months into this new administration which should be a honeymoon period, and yet, President Trump is already underwater quite significantly on his handling of the economy," Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of Biden’s National Economic Council, said in a call with reporters Monday hosted by the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-leaning advocacy group.
"That’s basically unprecedented," Ramamurti added, "and it demonstrates that the public understands that he’s not really trying to focus on the issues that are most important to them."
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.