Washington, Sept. 11, 2025 – Recent weeks have featured a curious sort of split screen: Americans have been increasingly clear to pollsters that inflation is their biggest worry about Donald Trump’s economy.
Meanwhile, the president doubled down on claims that inflation is an issue of the past.
This week was just the latest example.
On one front was a new Yahoo News/YouGov survey that asked respondents about Trump and the cost of living. The response — in a mirror of other recent polling — was a rock-bottom approval rating of 28%,
Yet here was Trump’s inflation message in a radio interview with WABC. “We have no inflation. Prices are down on just about everything.”
Trump’s message is at odds with both public perceptions and the data, as prices have persistently risen above the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.
But Trump and other inflation watchers got an encouraging sign Wednesday with the news that supply chain prices unexpectedly fell 0.1% in August compared with July, though data still shows a year-over-year increase of 2.6%.
It was a clear win after the expectation had been for a 3.3% increase. Trump’s response? Naturally, to go further and claim “Just out: No Inflation!!!” as he again pushed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower rates.
In any case, Americans have made inflation the issue with the steepest polling drop-off for the White House since Inauguration Day.
An Economist magazine tracker of Trump approval ratings found that Trump began his term with a narrowly positive approval rating on the issue of inflation and prices.
But the decline there has been more dramatic than on any other issue — and the president now faces a deficit of more than 30 percentage points.
This tension is only likely to increase Thursday, as another closely watched inflation measure is set to be released — the Consumer Price Index for August.
A series of polls with a consistent message: Inflation is a problem
The president’s message belies a bottom-line problem for the White House — not to mention Republicans up for reelection in next year’s midterms — that inflation is the White House’s most glaring economic weakness.
RealClearPolitics’ tracker of Trump’s job approval rating on inflation shows a current 38.8% average — a 20-point gap below his disapproval rating of 59.9%. The remainder offered no opinion on the issue.
Those numbers are well below Trump’s overall approval rating of 45.2% and even his economic rating of 41.7%.
The only issue tracked by RealClearPolitics where Trump scores lower is Russia/Ukraine.
It is a pattern repeated again and again.
A CBS news poll released this week found 36% of respondents approve of the way
Trump is handling the issue of inflation — well below his ratings on the economy and on immigration.
Only 20% of American adults in the poll think Trump’s policies will make them better off, while 65% say his policies will increase the price of their groceries.
The objection, of course, is largely centered around tariffs, with 62% of respondents in the CBS poll opposed to new tariffs on goods, and four in 10 reporting buying fewer things because of tariffs.
It’s a similar story in a new Reuters poll released this week, showing that only 30% of respondents back the president’s handling of the cost of living for US households.
Meanwhile, Trump’s focus on pressuring the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates has even led the president to toy with the idea of downplaying the central bank’s goal of getting inflation to 2%.
A recent social media post saw Trump approvingly quoting a Fox Business guest, Jay Hatfield of Infrastructure Capital Management. Hatfield’s message in part: that Federal Reserve Chair Powell “has done a terrible job” since adopting the 2% inflation target and that the standard is “too low, it’s too rigid.” (Yahoo Finance)
