He says it’s the “best 100-day start of any president in history”, however you’ll be able to file that alongside along with his boast about crowd sizes and his declare to have gained the 2020 election. In fact, the primary three months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been calamitous on virtually each measure. The one greatest achievement of these 100 days has been to function a warning of the perils of nationalist populism, which is efficient in profitable votes however disastrous when translated into actuality. That warning applies throughout the democratic world – and is particularly well timed in Britain.
Begin with the numbers that matter most to Trump himself. A slew of polls appeared this week, however all of them advised the identical story: that Trump’s approval rankings have collapsed, falling to the bottom degree for a newly put in president within the postwar period. He has now edged forward of his solely rival for that title: himself. The earlier low watermark for a president three months in was set by one Donald Trump in 2017.
Again then, 42% of Individuals authorized of the way in which Trump was doing his job. The most recent Ipsos survey for the Washington Put up/ABC Information has Trump at simply 39%. This, bear in mind, is supposed to be the honeymoon interval, but Trump is 10 factors behind the place Joe Biden stood at this level, 30 factors behind Barack Obama and 44 factors behind Ronald Reagan. Keep in mind: US presidents are likely to get much less, no more, in style as time goes on.
Maybe most important is that Trump is weak even in these areas the place he’s meant to be sturdy. Confidence in his means to deal with immigration has tumbled and the identical is true, much more critically, of his administration of the US economic system. On the latter, simply 37% again Trump, a depth he by no means plumbed throughout his first time period, even because the economic system seized up beneath Covid. For the primary time since 2001, a majority of Individuals consider their financial scenario is getting worse.
With good purpose. As a result of the financial knowledge is sort of as troubling for Trump as his ballot numbers. This week, official figures confirmed that the US economic system contracted by 0.3% within the first quarter of the 12 months, additional fuelling fears of a recession. Trump wasted no time in blaming the shrinkage on Biden, who was in cost for simply 20 days of the primary three months of 2025, an argument solely barely weakened by the truth that the final quarter with Biden in cost noticed development of two.4%.
It’s a precipitous drop, and the reason for it’s hardly mysterious. Economists agree that the offender is Trump’s tariffs, which prompted a surge in imports, as corporations scrambled to purchase in items from overseas earlier than the president’s on-again-off-again levies kicked in. As a result of these imported items and providers aren’t produced within the US, they’re subtracted from the headline GDP determine. Therefore the contraction. In the meantime, the chaos and volatility unleashed by Trump’s tariff coverage has dented client confidence, now right down to its lowest degree for the reason that recession of 1990, leaving Individuals hesitant to spend cash amid a lot uncertainty. Though the most recent job numbers look wholesome, analysts say the underlying image is alarming. As Bloomberg stories, “corporate investment plans and expectations for growth and jobs have all plummeted – and the key reason is Trump’s trade war.”
Trump is aware of that the warnings from retail giants Walmart and Goal, of empty cabinets as provides from closely tariffed China dry up, have lower by. He addressed that nervousness this week, however in a approach that ought to make even Trump’s admirers, those that often reward his means to attach with strange folks, fear that he’s shedding his contact.
Requested about potential shortages of toys at Christmas, Trump stated, “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.” Bit late in his profession for Trump to don the saffron robes and preach a Zen flight from consumerist materialism. His two-toys comment – which surprisingly didn’t function as one in all his marketing campaign pledges in 2024 – has already forged him as the Grinch set to break Christmas.
“BE PATIENT!!!” he urges on his social media platform, as he insists that the vertiginous downward slide of the inventory market both doesn’t matter or is all Biden’s fault. However the whiff of desperation is powerful as Trump begins to see why the one concept he truly believes in and has believed in for many years – tariffs – is an object of near-universal contempt amongst economists. Sure, tariffs might have succeeded in persuading Apple to shift manufacturing away from China. However these jobs aren’t about to maneuver to the US. Apple has introduced as an alternative that it’s going to assemble its US-bound iPhones in India. Higher restitch these purple baseball caps with a revised slogan: make India nice once more.
By now, you’ll recall, Trump was meant to have ended the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, certainly he promised to do this by 21 January. However after a quick ceasefire, Israel’s battle in opposition to Hamas in Gaza has resumed, the Trump administration having apparently misplaced curiosity. As for Ukraine, Trump bought to brag of a breakthrough this week, with an settlement that offers the US a stake in Ukraine’s mineral wealth. But it surely’s removed from the deal he sought.
The case he all the time made was that the US needed to be reimbursed for the billions it had given Ukraine in army assist beneath Biden – plucking the completely bogus determine of $350bn out of the air. However this week’s association consists of no such payback. Quite the opposite, the deal is one Kyiv can look on with quiet satisfaction. It appears the Ukrainians might scent Trump’s have to have one thing to shout about in time for his a hundredth day, and so they leveraged that eagerness to their benefit.
As for his expansionist threats to gobble up Panama, Greenland and Canada, the one concrete outcome these have introduced is defeat in Canada’s basic election for the pro-Trump Conservatives and a back-from-the-dead success for the Liberal occasion that vowed to defy him. Such is Trump’s narcissism that he even boasted about that, citing it as proof of how a lot he issues on this planet. As he put it, simply earlier than Canadians voted: “You know, until I came along, the Conservative was leading by 25 points,” he mused. “I was disliked by enough of the Canadians that I’ve thrown the election into a close call.”
The promise was that this second Trump time period could be totally different, that the chaos and churn of Trump 1.0 could be gone. However on Thursday, we had been again to the nice previous days, with the firing of his nationwide safety adviser, Mike Waltz, partly for his unintentional admission of a journalist right into a Sign group chat that mentioned assault plans for Yemen, partly for advocating a more durable stance on Vladimir Putin, and partly for incomes the hostility of far-right conspiracist Laura Loomer, who has the ear of the president.
So it’s truthful to say the 100 days haven’t gone as Trump would have wished. And because of these serial failures, you’ll be able to see the primary, small indicators that his energy to terrify is fading. Witness the handful of senate Republicans who voted with Democrats in opposition to his tariff coverage. And observe how the reliably rightwing editorial web page of the Wall Avenue Journal is now a fierce critic, slamming Trump as a “bully” and denouncing tariffs as “the biggest economic policy mistake in decades”. For just a few quick hours, even Jeff Bezos appeared able to take a stand, amid stories that Amazon was about to itemise the price of tariffs to US prospects, earlier than the corporate backed down.
After all, none of this ought to be a shock. Trump’s conman guarantees and delusional desires of turning the clock again had been all the time sure to fail. That is the character of nationalist populism, whether or not it wears a purple cap in Michigan or a turquoise rosette in Runcorn. It’s professional at turning grievance, division and nostalgia into votes. However relating to governing, it can all the time fail. It presents an outlet for criticism – and has no solutions in any respect.
