Did These Dire Polls Fuel Trump’s Flip-Flop on Tariffs?

In the hours before President Donald Trump announced he was putting a pause on some of his new tariffs, polls continued to show Americans turning increasingly sour on them, especially as economists and financial industry leaders continued to predict a recession.

One week ago, Trump held a press conference in the Rose Garden to sign an executive order imposing sweeping new tariffs on virtually all imports, sending the markets reeling. Even a number of Republicans and some of the president’s staunchest defenders on Fox News have spoken out to criticize the tariffs as causing unnecessary economic harm.

Wednesday afternoon, the president wrote a Truth Social post to announce there would be “a 90 day PAUSE” for the increased tariffs on 75 countries that he said had reached out to the U.S. to negotiate, along with raising the tariff on China to 125% because of the “lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets.”

On the Wednesday morning episode of CNN News Central, data guru Harry Enten broke down the polling numbers, and he painted a bleak picture for Trump.

Anchor Kate Bolduan asked Enten what Americans’ “baseline feeling” was about the tariffs that were “rocking global markets” and expected to cause “prices on almost everything” likely to go up.

“They hate ’em,” Enten answered bluntly. “They hate ’em. And it’s going in the wrong direction.”

Citing a Wall Street Journal poll, he pointed out how the numbers had flipped from January, when 48% favored Trump’s tariffs and 46% opposed, to now in April with 54% opposed and 42% in favor.

“This, bottom line, is a political loser for Donald Trump,” said Enten, “and he is losing the messaging battle on this. Americans might have been a little open to the idea of tariffs, coming into this administration. But since then, their opposition through the roof.”

Enten went on to discuss how a growing number of people were expecting a recession and this was all resulting in blows to Trump’s approval ratings on the economy.

WSJ’s Annie Linskey reported that Trump — whom she labeled “a consummate consumer of cable news” — had said he had been watching Fox Business Wednesday morning when JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon was interviewed. Dimon had predicted a recession as a “likely outcome” of Trump’s new tariffs.

As other reporting has noted, it is not clear what will happen when the 90-day “pause” expires, what the criteria are for the 75 countries to be able to keep avoiding the tariffs, what the tariffs for Canada and Mexico actually are, and multiple other factors leaving investors still wary. The trillions lost in the markets over the past few days were not fully recovered by Wednesday’s post-pause gains, and a number of economists were still viewing a recession this year as likely.

Numerous conservative commentators had voiced sharp criticism over the tariffs during the past few days, and Trump backing off did little to assuage their critiques, instead drawing complaints about the damage already wrought to the economy and U.S. financial stability from the president’s “mercurial” approach to tariffs. GOP members of Congress have expressed worries that, after economic concerns helped sweep them to victory last fall, the tariff issue could turn the issue into an albatross around Republican necks in the 2026 midterms and the next presidential contest in 2028.

Enten had addressed this issue too, pointing out that the economy “has traditionally been Donald Trump’s strength.”

“You go back, April of 2017, his net approval rating on the economy was plus five points,” he said. “It was positive pretty much throughout his entire first term. Look at where we are now – minus 12 points. All of a sudden, the strength of Donald Trump has become a weakness of Donald Trump. It’s one of his weakest positions. And more than that, at the beginning of this administration, his net approval rating on the economy was plus six points, -12 points now — it’s fallen nearly 20 points over the course of less than three months.”

“That’s a very big drop,” Enten continued. “That is real. It is very clear that the American people do not like what’s going on with this tariff plan, do not like Donald Trump’s plans for the economy. And they’re taking it out on Donald Trump. And that’s why his economic approval rating is falling. And that is why his overall approval rating is also falling.”

“This could be the thing that we look back — right now, his economic approval rating is swimming with the fishes, so far underwater — it could be that this could take Donald Trump’s political career, and make it swimming with the fishes as well,” Enten concluded.

“Let’s see what happens in the next 24 hours,” said Bolduan.

“We shall see,” said Enten. “It’s all crazy.”

“We know how that worked out for Luca Brasi,” quipped John Berman to wrap the segment.

Watch the clip above via CNN.