Poll shows dip in Trump’s approval as he concedes inflation is back

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s Gallup Poll approval rating dipped slightly after the initial disruptive weeks of his presidency that have seen mass firings of federal workers, sudden freezes on federal spending and new tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China.

Gallup, which has tracked the opening approval ratings for American Presidents going back to Dwight Eisenhower, found Trump’s approval rating dipped slightly from 47 percent in late January to 45 percent in mid-February. That is 15 points lower than the historical average of all other elected Presidents at this point in their first terms since 1953, according to Gallup’s polling.

The poll found a majority of Americans don’t like how Trump is handling the economy, with 54 percent disapproving, and foreign trade, with 53 percent who disapprove. (The Gallup poll is based on telephone interviews with 1,004 adults during the two-week period ending Feb. 16, and its margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.) Despite his historically low support among Americans more broadly, Republican voters remain strongly behind Trump.

His job approval among Republicans is 93 percent, while his approval among Democrats is 4 percent. Among independent voters, Trump has 37 percent approval.

During a taped interview that aired Tuesday night, Trump acknowledged that prices are going up on his watch. “Inflation is back,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity during a friendly interview alongside Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the person Trump has put in charge of slashing federal jobs. But Trump blamed President Biden’s policies for the increase. “I had nothing to do with it. These people have run the country. They spent money like nobody has ever spent,” he said.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that inflation has ticked up slightly at the beginning of the year, driven by rising costs for car insurance, used cars, health care, Internet and phone bills and airline tickets. US prices rose 3 percent in the 12 months ending January, compared with a 2.9 percent rise over the 12 months ending in December. Fuel import prices alone rose 3.2 percent in January, the largest one month increase since April.