Trump approval slips to lowest point in second term: Survey
(The Hill) — President Trump’s approval rating slipped to its lowest point during his second White House term amid his handling of the economy and the recent Houthi Signal chat leak, according to a survey published Wednesday.
The new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that the president’s approval rating was 43 percent, representing a 2-point drop since the late March iteration of the survey. After Trump took office on Jan. 20, his approval rating stood at 47 percent.
In the latest poll, 37 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s handling of the economy and 30 percent approved of his approach to addressing the high cost of living in the country.
A majority of Americans, 52 percent, said that hiking tariffs on cars and auto parts will be detrimental to the people they are close with. A similar share of respondents said increasing tariffs across the board, as Trump announced he was doing on Wednesday, would make things worse, not better. Approximately a third of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said that tariffs would harm the economy, according to the poll.
On Wednesday, Trump outlined the U.S.’s new tariff plan, slapping a minimum 10 percent import tax on goods coming into the nation. Many countries face higher rates, led by the 54 percent tariff levied on China.
The U.S.’s main trading partners — Mexico and Canada — were exempted from the fresh tariff package. Both countries are still subject to a 25 percent duty, although items covered under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement have been left unscathed.
The survey respondents also dinged Trump over the leaked Signal chat involving multiple members of his administration. The Atlantic’s top editor revealed in an article last week that he was inadvertently added to the Signal thread featuring top national security officials. Messages published by The Atlantic show the officials discussing military strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen, an attack that took place in mid-March.
A large majority of respondents, 74 percent, including 91 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of GOP voters, stated that the officials were “reckless” for discussing the war plans in this manner. Twenty-two percent said it was harmless.
Just more than a third of poll respondents, 34 percent, approved of Trump’s foreign policy, a 3-point drop from the late-March version of the survey. Nearly half, 48 percent, were satisfied with the president’s oversight of immigration.
Trump's approval rating dipped 3 points, dropping from 52 to 49 percent, in a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll. Forty-six percent disapproved of the commander in chief.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted from March 31 to April 2 among 1,486 U.S. adults. The margin of error was about 3 percentage points.