Donald Trump is clearly rattled [View all]

The price of eggs has fallen by 80pc, apparently. There are states where gas is now below $2 a gallon. And 100pc of jobs are now going to American-born workers. In a typically punchy end-of-year address from the White House on Wednesday evening, President Trump came out fighting. The fact-checkers will no doubt be hard at work, trying to validate each extravagant claim. But the bigger point was surely this. The President is clearly rattled by the way his polling numbers on the economy are in freefall – and he has yet to work out how he should respond to that.

When he won last November’s election, there was one issue, above all, that delivered his victory. The Democrats had suffered a historic loss of faith in their handling of the economy. “Eleven months ago I inherited a mess, with the worst inflation in history,” President Trump opened his address. And over the next 30 minutes, he attempted to convince his prime-time audience that everything was getting far better.

The trouble is, the voters are not convinced. In the latest polls, only 36pc of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, while 45pc of voters cite rising prices as their top concern. Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 39pc. Unlike his first term, when average voters generally liked his economic record, he is now facing a backlash. Populist Democrats such as the newly elected New York mayor Zohran Mamdani are exploiting “affordability” as a winning issue for the Left. Trump can surely sense his vulnerability. Ironically, he is turning into Joe Biden, a president undermined by rising prices.

It is hard to believe that Trump’s often bizarre, rambling address will have changed people’s minds. To start with, he is partly to blame for rising prices. Tariffs may or may not be the right way to rebuild American manufacturing, secure supply chains, and raise revenue to balance the books. We can all argue about that. But they clearly put up the prices of many imported goods, at least in the short term.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/donald-trump-is-clearly-rattled/ar-AA1SzeZC?ocid=nl_article_link