‘He said Make America Great Again. And I have not seen him do that’: Only 17% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of cost of living

An AP-NORC poll found only 17% of U.S. adults approve of President Trump's handling of the cost of living and 26% approve of his economic management, a 14-percentage-point decline from March 2025. Some 65% blame Trump’s policies for persistent high prices, while 64% say he has gone too far on tariffs and 69% believe the Iran war has not been worth fighting. Roughly half of Americans are highly concerned about affording gasoline and food, creating a material political headwind for Republicans ahead of the November midterms.

Analysis

The investable transmission is not the poll itself but a rising probability of policy constraint: a weaker governing mandate would make further tariff escalation, fiscal expansion and Iran-related supply disruption harder to sustain. That is modestly disinflationary at the margin over 1-3 months, favoring duration-sensitive equities and import-heavy retailers, while reducing the political premium embedded in domestic-protection beneficiaries. The immediate market effect should be limited unless election-odds markets reprice materially; polling alone has poor standalone signal after sentiment has already deteriorated.

Consumer stress is more consequential for earnings than broad retail-sales headlines: households typically preserve spend on food, fuel and essentials by cutting higher-margin discretionary categories. Walmart (WMT), Costco (COST), Dollar General (DG) and grocery-exposed consumer staples should gain traffic, but COST's valuation leaves little room for a defensive multiple expansion. The cleaner relative loser set is lower-income discretionary and installment-credit exposure—Burlington (BURL), Five Below (FIVE), Affirm (AFRM) and Synchrony (SYF)—where weaker transaction frequency can combine with promotional intensity and rising delinquencies.

Contrarian risk: political pressure to demonstrate rapid price relief could produce targeted tariff exemptions or a temporary energy-policy shift, but these would benefit importers more than they repair aggregate household purchasing power. Conversely, any escalation that lifts crude or shipping costs would overwhelm the political-constraint thesis and reaccelerate goods inflation. The key falsifiers are a sustained rise in gasoline prices, a renewed acceleration in core goods CPI, or retailer guidance indicating consumers are trading up rather than down during the holiday period.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Initiate a 1-3 month defensive-consumer pair: long WMT versus short BURL, sized beta-neutral. The thesis is relative traffic and margin resilience as value-seeking rises; target 8-12% relative return, with exit if BURL raises comparable-sales and gross-margin guidance or WMT signals material discretionary weakness.
• Maintain a tactical long in TLT or receive 5-year swaps only after the next core CPI confirms easing in goods inflation. A policy-constraint narrative can support lower real-rate risk over 1-3 months, but use a 3-4% stop on TLT because an oil/shipping shock would reverse the duration trade quickly.
• Avoid adding to tariff-protected industrial and domestic-manufacturing exposures until election probabilities and tariff implementation calendars are clearer; use XLI relative to XLY as a monitoring spread rather than a position. The missing data are company-specific tariff pass-through, exemption rates and inventory sourcing, which determine whether political risk is earnings-relevant.
• Watch AFRM and SYF for downside entries around monthly delinquency disclosures and holiday guidance. A long WMT/short AFRM pair offers asymmetric protection if lower-income consumption weakens; cover the short if credit-loss metrics remain stable and merchant volumes accelerate.