This week in Trumponomics: America’s most unpopular leader

Rick Newman
·Senior Columnist
Updated ·4 min read

Americans appreciate the leaders they see guiding the nation through the coronavirus crisis. President Trump isn’t one of them.

A large new survey from Northeastern, Rutgers and Harvard universities finds that in each of the 50 states, people rate their governor’s handling of the crisis higher than they rate Trump’s. The average approval for governors is 66%, 22 points higher than Trump’s 44% approval.

There’s reelection trouble for Trump in these numbers. Trump severely underperforms governors in six swing states likely to determine the presidential winner in November’s elections. Trump trails the governor by 32 points in Ohio, 27 points in Michigan, 22 points in Pennsylvania, 19 points in Wisconsin, 16 points in North Carolina and 5 points in Florida. Four of those six—Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina—have Democratic governors, which means voters there favor the Dems’ strategy over Trump’s Republican approach.

Trump has declared the federal government a “backstop” to states as they grapple with the pernicious virus, and bickered with governors pleading for medical and financial help. Think tanks, public health experts and economists have published comprehensive plans for containing the virus and reopening the economy, but there is still no comprehensive plan from the Trump administration, even though overlapping White House task forces are supposedly working on it.

A lot can change before the November elections, and the nation might be on the upswing by then. But the economy continues a nauseating freefall that compounds the damage by the hour. A sharp plunge in first-quarter GDP suggests the total lost output during the coronavirus could be three times the decline during the last recession, according to Oxford Economics. At least 30 million Americans have lost their jobs since mid-March. Manufacturing output hit an 11-year low in April and is probably going lower. It’s another grim showing on this week’s Trump-o-meter, which reads FAILING, the second-lowest score.

Source: Yahoo Finance
Source: Yahoo Finance

Congress has provided $3.6 trillion in stimulus spending so far, which won’t end the recession we’re in, but will make it less severe. Trump’s role at this point is to provide forceful, unified leadership that complements what the states are doing. Nobel-winning economist Paul Romer argues that the nation ought to be testing 20 million people per day—100 times the current testing pace—at a cost of $73 billion. Trump should press Congress to fund that tomorrow. Entrepreneur Mark Cuban says the federal government should recruit people who have lost their jobs into a new a corps of contact tracers who will help identify anybody who might have been exposed to the virus, so they can get tested and quarantine if necessary.

Trump: Nah.

So we muddle along. Despite the tumbling economy, there’s optimism among investors, who pushed the S&P 500 stock index up more than 12% in April, for its best monthly showing since 1987. Stocks are down 12% for the year and down 16% since the Feb. 19 peak, which is reassuring given that stocks were down 34% in late March. Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices calls it a “bull run in a bear market.”

Markets are rising on the belief that the worst is over and states will be able to continue the gradual business reopenings starting to occur—without any setbacks. Public health experts aren’t so sure. They warn of a coronavirus resurgence as people move about more freely, without a vaccine or freely available testing. If the governors screw up, voters will sour on them. They could sour on Trump even more.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.” Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman. Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com. Encrypted communication available. Click here to get Rick’s stories by email.

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