What Trump Voters Understand About the Economy

Why is Donald Trump continuing to poll so strongly with voters?

As unpalatable as a second Trump term would be, many pundits who tackle this question have ignored a striking fact: The typical household’s living standard improved during the three Trump years before the pandemic. Under President Biden, Americans have (at best) struggled to keep even with inflation.

Mr. Trump’s huge personal negatives — his meanspirited personality, his toadying to dictators and shunning of American allies, and his unpardonable effort to steal an election — should more than offset his economic record. The old saw that Mussolini got the trains to run on time should not be understood as an endorsement.

But it is one thing to loathe Mr. Trump and hope for his defeat. It is another to wish away his successes or, as has become common, to ascribe his popularity to voter prejudices or weaknesses of character. The leitmotif in such arguments is that blue voters are rational political actors voting on merit while Trump is appealing primarily, if not exclusively, to irrational semi-citizens devoid of even self-interested calculation.

That might be. But it can’t be ignored that they might also have experienced the pointed rise, after adjusting for inflation, in median household incomes — how the typical family lives — during the Trump years prior to the pandemic: 10.5 percent from 2016 to 2019. And inequality contracted noticeably. Thus, the 2020 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances on (roughly) the Trump era: “In grouping families by wealth, families at the top of the distribution experienced a sharp decline in average income (following particularly outsized gains over the 2010-16 period), whereas families in the lower and middle portions of the wealth distribution all saw modest gains.”

This is not to say that Mr. Trump’s policies caused inequality to fall (a complicated question) or were responsible for most of the economy’s improvement. While his tax cuts were a stimulant, his tariffs on imported steel, a signature policy, probably cost the country more jobs in manufacturing than it gained in steel, and at great expense to American consumers.

And modern economies are not puppets dancing to a president’s string; they are susceptible to many influences beyond the control of one official, even those of an Oval Office bully. Moreover, Mr. Trump inherited a strong tailwind; real median household income rose by almost 12 percent during the second term of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Mr. Trump was fortunate.

But voters aren’t economists. They often judge presidents on the basis of coincident economic performance. Jimmy Carter had to deal with serious inflation and George H.W. Bush endured a recession; each was voted out. Mr. Bush’s successor, Bill Clinton, reaped the recovery; he got four more years.

Mr. Biden inherited a tough hand: an economy upset by Covid and supply chain disruptions. Yet he presided over a return to growth and dodged a much-predicted recession (touch wood). Jobs came roaring back. Early last year, unemployment dipped below the prepandemic low of 3.5 percent under Mr. Trump, and it remains a still-impressive 3.7 percent.

Wage inequality is also contracting under Mr. Biden. I would argue that voters care less about inequality than pundits do. What they care most about is whether they are doing better.

And this is where Mr. Biden has fallen short. Inflation has snatched away the gains from even a very strong labor market. Over Mr. Biden’s first two years, as price hikes outran wages, real median household income fell 2.7 percent. The census has yet to report median income for 2023, but given that real wages were up about 1 percent through November, the cumulative change in household median income, adjusted for inflation, over Mr. Biden’s first three years is likely to be in the range of mildly negative to very mildly positive. In other words, in the all-important category of improving living standards, the country did not make progress.

This shows that jobs and output, while very important, are not the only economic indicators that matter. Inflation matters, too — because high inflation taxes away prosperity. This is one area in which I think the president — along with the Federal Reserve — does bear some responsibility. He was warned by voices within his own party — notably, Larry Summers — that his first budget package, enacted nearly a year after the Covid recession had ended, was too big relative to the need. He went ahead and inflation in 2022 soared to 8 percent, a 40-year high.

While Mr. Biden is still a big deficit spender, the Fed has brought inflation down by more than half. Economic growth in the remainder of Mr. Biden’s term may well contribute to rising living standards. I hope voters judge him on this improving picture. And I hope they take noneconomic factors into account, including Mr. Trump’s continued refusal to acknowledge his defeat in 2020, which has poisoned the public square and eroded the civic fabric supporting the country’s democracy. In a phrase, Mr. Trump is unfit for office.

That does not mean we should shrink from honestly assessing performance, including economic performance, under Mr. Trump as well as under Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump is so off-putting, many find it hard to evaluate him rationally, as we would anyone else. But it is right to do so, and we learn from having our eyes wide, not shut. And — something Democrats should have learned by now — condescending to Trump voters will not win many of them over.

Roger Lowenstein is a journalist and the author of “Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War.”

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