Tracking the Trump administration’s nosedive – The Washington Post

Tracking the Trump administration’s nosedive

A lot of lines on a lot of charts are pointing down and to the right.

Updated yesterday at 9:29 a.m. EDT, 6 min, Opinion, By Philip Bump

Editor’s Note: Photo unavailable.
First lady Melania Trump and President Donald Trump attend the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday in D.C. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Perhaps the best analogy for the first three months of Donald Trump’s second presidential term comes not from American history but from Looney Tunes.

“We’re in the Wile E. Coyote Moment where actually all the key changes have already happened,” writer Julian Sanchez offered this month, “and we’re just waiting for folks to look down.”
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

That seems right. Trump and his allies have ripped through any number of systems that constitute and bolster the United States, but the full extent of damage hasn’t yet become apparent to most Americans — and may not for years. We’re still jogging straight ahead, unaware that there’s no more cliff underneath us.

To moderate Sanchez’s excellent analogy, I’ll note that there are actually two unknown variables here. The first: when Americans are likely to realize that there’s no ground underneath. The second is how far we will fall.

There is one area in which many Americans are already feeling the tug of gravity (if you’ll forgive the ongoing extension of the metaphor): the markets. Since Trump took office in January, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down significantly, far more than during any other recent presidency.

When Barack Obama took office in 2009 during an international financial crisis, the Dow tanked. But by this point in his presidency, it had rebounded. That’s not the case this time — in part because the plunge was in response to Trump’s actions, not despite his efforts to backstop the economy.

The S&P 500 demonstrates a similar pattern. It fell during George W. Bush’s first months in office, too, but was already recovering by the equivalent point in his first term.

We should note an individual stock that’s relevant to the administration: that of Tesla, the car company run by Trump adviser Elon Musk. It fared poorly in the early months of Joe Biden’s administration, too, but not to this extent. In Tesla’s case, though, that’s more a function of Musk than Trump.

Some economic measures are headed upward, though that’s not necessarily a positive: Gold prices often increase when investors sense instability or turmoil, and sure enough, the price has surged.

The value of the American dollar offers another indicator that investors are wary of the U.S. economy. Particularly in the past month, its value has plunged.

According to these measures, at least one group — investors — is aware that the ground under its feet isn’t as sturdy as it was 100 days ago. But a sense that the economy is wavering isn’t unique to the investor class. The University of Michigan’s measure of consumer sentiment shows that Americans generally are much less confident in the economy than they were at the outset of Trump’s second term.

The administration’s articulated strategy is to reshape the economy to shrink our trade deficits with other countries while addressing the ongoing federal deficit through a combination of increased revenue (through tariffs on imported goods rather than increased income taxes) and decreased spending.

This formulation is wildly generous in a variety of ways, including that the brunt of the cost of tariffs is paid by Americans. It’s also generous in suggesting that spending will be cut.

Despite the myriad claims of savings from Musk’s team and the endless stream of stories about the immediate and long-term effects of culling government programs, the government has spent more money so far this year than it had at the same point last year. 2025 was also outpacing 2021 until Biden-era programs targeting the covid-19 pandemic were implemented.

Perhaps Musk’s cuts will manifest. Or, as is more likely the case, we have sacrificed or hampered those programs with little effect on the massive federal budget — but inevitable effects on American and global populations.

Trump can, however, claim success on one measure: the decrease in stops at the U.S.-Mexico border. Border encounters (as the Customs and Border Protection vernacular puts it) were already trending down, year over year. In February and March, they fell below 12,000 per month.

Of course that, too, may not prove a boon to the country. American population growth in recent years has largely been a function of immigration, as has our relative economic strength.

Trump’s approval numbers are also declining. This is expected to some extent; new presidents often enjoy an initial bump in their approval polling that fades. Trump’s net approval (the percentage viewing his job performance positively minus the percentage viewing him negatively) slipped into negative territory in recent weeks, according to averages compiled by data journalist G. Elliott Morris.
(Created with Datawrapper)

The only president as unpopular as Trump at this point in his presidency? Trump, eight years ago.

Even on immigration, that putative bright spot, Trump’s approval numbers have slipped according to Economist-YouGov data. Their most recent poll shows that more people now view his handling of immigration negatively than positively. A poll released this week by Reuters also has him net negative.

Read more: Tracking the Trump administration’s nosedive – The Washington PostSource Links: Opinion | Tracking the Trump administration’s nosedive – The Washington Post