The first is that basic data measuring the health of the economy has held up reasonably well. The second is that the future outlook for the economy is lousy.
The explanation for this mismatch between the present and future economy isn’t mysterious. Trump’s new tariffs on imports are poised to raise prices, lower growth, and possibly cause a recession. Investors see it coming. Business operators see it coming. Shoppers see it coming. Trump himself may see it coming, but if he does, either he doesn’t care or he thinks the pain of a trade-induced slowdown will somehow end up worth the trouble.
Yahoo Finance evaluates the Trump economy in comparison with those of past presidents at the same point in their terms, using data on a variety of metrics provided by Moody’s Analytics. The “hard” data on actual economic outcomes shows Trump in the middle of the pack.
On job creation, for instance, Trump ranks third among nine presidential terms going back to Bill Clinton’s first term, which started in 1993. Only Joe Biden and second-term Bill Clinton did better.
Trump ranks fifth out of nine on manufacturing employment and seventh on income growth. On inflation, which was the biggest economic liability of Joe Biden’s presidency, Trump ranks third and is tied with his first-term performance at the same point in 2017. (Note that inflation is the only chart above in which a lower number is better.)
Those numbers all suggest the Trump economy is doing fine so far — not too hot, not too cold. The problem for Trump is that those are lagged metrics telling where the economy has been, not where it’s going.
Other data capturing the outlook for the future economy is far gloomier.
The stock market is one forecast of the future economy, given that it’s based on estimates of companies’ growth and earnings prospects. And the turbulent stock market has been a defining feature of Trump’s second term.
Stocks rose during Trump’s first month on the job as investors looked forward to tax cuts and deregulation. Investors thought Trump might threaten aggressive tariffs, but ease up once markets registered disapproval.
The biggest surprise of Trump’s second term is that he has imposed much stiffer tariffs than just about anybody expected, and generally kept them in place despite market turmoil. Trump has raised the average tax on imported goods from 2.5% when he took office to about 27% now. His 145% tax on Chinese imports is so onerous that many shipments of Chinese goods to the US market have simply stopped.
Stocks peaked on Feb. 19, then rolled over as Trump unveiled one tariff after another. By early April, stocks had plunged 19% in a remarkably short period of time. They’ve rebounded a bit since, but Trump still registers the worst 100-day stock market performance of any president in our comparison set. It’s worth restating that when Trump took office, there was no reason other than Trump’s own trade war to think stocks would suddenly tank.
Tariff concerns have also pushed consumer attitudes to recessionary lows. Trump’s term has begun with the biggest drop in confidence among any of the nine presidents, based on the University of Michigan’s sentiment index. That shows consumers’ estimate of the current economy dropping every month since Trump took office, which is unique in the data set. Most presidents enjoy a honeymoon period in which voters hold out hope for economic improvements, at least for a few months. Not Trump.
Americans are especially worried about Trump’s tariffs raising prices, which, by definition, they will do, since they add a new tax onto the cost of imported goods at every end of the supply chain. In the latest Michigan survey, respondents said they expect inflation, now just 2.4%, to be around 6.5% a year from now. That’s the highest inflation outlook since 1981. The outlook under Biden wasn’t even that bad, which means consumers expect higher inflation under Trump than they did at the worst moment of the Biden economy.
Trump’s approval rating has begun to deteriorate as a result of the economic chaos. In Gallup surveys, which cover all the presidents on our list, Trump’s approval rating has dropped from 47% to 44%, a fairly modest decline. Other surveys have Trump starting higher or falling further. The latest CNN poll, for instance, pegs Trump’s approval rating at just 41%. Trump’s marks on handling the economy, which used to be one of his strong points, are now a liability.
So of those three forecasting metrics, Trump has gone straight down in two — consumer sentiment and overall approval — while the stock market took a few weeks before registering its dismay with Trump. That’s the fastest deterioration among the last nine presidents, and it’s hard to find any analog to Trump’s rapid drift down in postwar presidential history.
The president’s first 100 days don’t define his entire term. Biden, as one example, was generally popular until the middle of his second year, when his approval rating sank, never to recover. George W. Bush, on the other hand, grew slightly less popular during his first year until his approval rating soared after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
So Trump’s declining approval rating isn’t locked in.
Rough start: President Donald Trump arrives at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J., Saturday, April 26, 2025, upon returning from a trip to attend the funeral of Pope Francis at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
But the forces Trump has put in motion seem more likely to move the needle left than right. While Americans are worried about Trump’s tariffs, they haven’t yet noticed the price hikes and product shortages Trump’s protectionism is likely to cause, since most importers stocked up on goods before the tariffs went into effect. Assuming Trump more or less keeps his tariffs in place, shoppers will start to see some startling changes in prices and availability by mid-summer or early fall. The hard data will move in the direction of today’s glum forecasts and begin to show a weakening economy.
Trump insists that many trade deals are afoot, with the implication that he could lower or eliminate some tariffs in exchange for trade partner concessions. Stocks have recovered some losses of late, driven by investor optimism that maybe tariffs won’t be that bad after all. If Trump can end the trade war and get the economy back on track, voters might eventually forget that Trump started his presidency by strafing the global trading system.
Yet Trump’s most prominent target, China, says no trade deal is in the works and that the two economic giants aren’t even talking about a deal. And Trump sounds like a tariff true believer who is willing to go the distance, no matter the cost. When we reach Trump’s 200th, 500th, or 1,000th day, we might wish we could go back to any day that predated tariffs.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Bluesky and X: @rickjnewman.
