Continuing the analysis of why Donald Trump is losing control of US politics, Dominic Jackson examines Trump’s economic policies and the effect they, and other factors, are having in causing his decline.
Part 2: Trump’s popularity is declining
The 2025 elections – ‘It’s the economy, stupid!’
Although Trump and his allies tried to characterise the 4 November, 2025 US elections as ‘Democrat states vote Democrat!’, the reality is that the US as a whole swung massively away from the Republicans. Whilst the Democrat victories in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey together with the New York mayoral contest could be ascribed to a number of factors including disgust at Trump’s abuses of power, his pardoning of violent Jan 6 criminals and allegations of conflicts of interest since beginning his second presidential term, the most important issue facing US voters was, and is, the economy. Trump campaigned on the promise of ‘cutting prices from day 1’, yet in September 2025 US inflation, especially of food prices, remained over 3%. Trump’s policy of tariffs and trade wars has not helped and he has been forced to reduce tariffs on numerous food products in the run up to Thanksgiving and Christmas. US unemployment figures have risen to 4.4% with youth unemployment in August 2025 reaching the highest level since February 2021. Biden/Harris lost the presidential election even though the US economy was growing because voters didn’t feel their lives were improving and, despite Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary, most US voters are not easily fooled. Trump’s approval ratings have sunk to approximately 38%; his actions in holding lavish parties at Mar-a-Lago, bailing Argentina out with $20 billion, demolishing the east wing of the White House to build a new ballroom and refurbishing the Oval office with tasteless interior décor whilst Americans struggle with ever increasing housing, child care and healthcare costs all conspire to turn voters against him.
Tariffs Are Not Taxes (except when they are)
One of Trump’s major economic policies since starting his second term has been to impose tariffs on imports from other countries. His legal justification for this was largely the International Economic Emergencies Act (IEEPA) of 1977 which allows the president to “regulate international commerce after declaring a national emergency in response to any unusual and extraordinary threat to the United States which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States”. Trump’s ‘emergency’, justifying use of these powers, was the US trade deficit. The tariffs have been described as “economically illiterate” with Trump fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of and reasons for trade deficits, not to mention why a long-running situation (the US trade deficit) is suddenly an emergency.
The tariffs have had a predictable effect on US inflation figures and the Trump administration denied that the cost to importers is mostly passed on to US consumers in the form of higher prices, until it became impossible to do so any longer. The question came to a head before the Supreme Court in November 2025. The fundamental legal argument is that tariffs are taxes and that taxation, per Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, is a matter for Congress. Trump’s government claims that the tariffs are not taxes and Trump’s solicitor general claimed that the revenue raised was ‘incidental’. His own Treasury department meanwhile boasts of the revenue brought in from tariffs. The US government had a difficult time in the hearing with the Justices seemingly unwilling to accept the argument that the primary purpose of the tariffs was not to raise revenues. Other courts have already ruled that IEEPA does not authorise the president to impose tariffs. The Supreme Court’s ruling is awaited.
The splintering MAGA coalition
Trump’s ‘grand coalition’ that swept him to power in 2024 is disintegrating, arguably even faster than that which won the UK 2024 general election for Keir Starmer and Labour. The ‘perfect storm’ of the US economy not improving (in large part thanks to Trump’s economic policies), together with the sudden re-emergence of the Epstein Files and Trump’s previous desperation to prevent their release are obvious causes. The impression is that he is tone-deaf to the concerns of ordinary voters but feathers his own nest. Yet why did even former Trump ultra-loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene defy him over the Epstein Files discharge petition and ultimately swing the vote against him – setting in train what could be a catastrophic series of events for Trump’s presidency?
Greene has historically been one of Trump’s strongest supporters and a loyal member of the MAGA movement. Whilst she has had policy disagreements with Trump including over his Iran strikes and his opposition to extending affordable healthcare during the government shutdown, the roots of the feud go further back. Greene had ambitions to run for the Senate in Georgia which were blocked by Trump. Her Congressional district is rated at +19 points for the Republicans, making it the safest Republican district in Georgia but Trump feared she would lose the Senate race and blocked her from standing. Greene is widely known for her enthusiastic promotion of conspiracy theories including QAnon (including one that states there is a cabal of child sex abusers in cahoots with the ‘deep state’ operating a global child sex trafficking ring and that Donald Trump is leading the fight against these people). One can only imagine her inner conflicts as evidence emerges that there was indeed a powerful child sex abuse gang – and there were questions over what Trump knew about it. Greene is certainly not the kind of ally progressives would ordinarily engage with – she has promoted antisemitic and anti-Islamic views and it remains to be seen if her recent fall out with Trump, together with a new attempt to forgive and make up with him, will gain her enduring support from independent and left wing US thinkers.
Trump needs to learn politics
The events of November 2025 indicate that Trump is not nearly as powerful as he likes to think he is. And much of this is down to his own poor political decisions. The Republican Party is, like many major political parties (especially those in ‘First Past The Post’ electoral systems), a coalition of semi-overlapping ideologies: small state conservatives, libertarians, power-hungry MAGA conspiracists as well as its traditional low tax, pro-business thinkers. Trump tried to harness support from all these factions and succeeded in winning power by doing so – but now that he’s in power his own political missteps are destroying him. Running his presidential campaign as a ‘white knight’ who would (his supporters thought) expose the shady but powerful cabal protecting the likes of Epstein but then executing a rapid ‘volte face’, is one such mistake. Another, as Republican discharge petition rebel (yet also unwavering Trump advocate) Lauren Boebert has experienced, is pressuring the rebels hard to withdraw their support for the petition. Why? Is there something to hide? As Reform UK is finding out, populists gaining power cannot always keep their campaign promises but ignoring the issues of concern to most voters is not good politics.
Next episode…
The danger for America is that Trump is wounded but only partially cornered. He pressured Texas into ‘redrawing its electoral maps’ (or ‘gerrymandering’ to be less euphemistic) to give Republicans five extra Congressional seats in the hope of retaining control of the House at the November 2026 midterm elections. Yet even in deep Red Texas this has proved unpopular and was ultimately overturned by the courts due to the incompetence of Trump and his allies. Deep Blue California responded in kind, with a referendum on ‘Proposition 50’ to cancel out Texas’ seat redistribution – a move that easily passed. In another example of poor politics, Trump directed his Justice Department to sue the state of California over its redistricting. Noticing the writing on the wall, Indiana resisted Trump’s attempts to get them to gerrymander.
Trump is not going to relinquish power easily. US courts have blocked his attempts to deploy the military in Democrat-voting cities, including (doubtless much to his chagrin) by a judge he appointed. Democrats fear that, had he succeeded, the aim may well have been to seize voting machines in November 2026 amidst yet more unfounded claims of election fraud. The matter is now pending before the US Supreme Court however Judge Immergut’s ruling in Portland is positively surgical in its dismantling of the US government’s arguments. The same US Supreme Court that rolled over easily for Trump in many instances was decidedly hostile to his government’s argument that Trump had the unfettered right to impose widescale tariffs. Trump has now signed off on the release of the Epstein files, but will they be redacted?
As Winston Churchill famously observed: ‘This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.’ Trump is wounded and weakened. It is for US progressives and pro-democracy activists to press home their advantage.
