Americans Really Dislike Trump. But They're About to Truly Hate Him.
Donald Trump's first 100 days in office may have been the longest, figuratively speaking, of any U.S. president in history. But we can also say definitively that they were the most disastrous, ever. His draconian deportations, destruction of the federal government, and insane tariff Tilt-a-Whirls have driven his approval numbers so low as to be a modern marvel; the last time a president was this disliked after 100 days, we were fighting a world war and the Slinky was the country's most popular toy. Trump has ended up here for no other reason than that he pursued the very policies he promised to pursue on the campaign trail. That's the story of his first 100 days: Americans elected a dumb asshole, and natural consequences followed.
Now let's consider the next 100 days, which look to be even worse for all of us—including the president. As The New Republic's Alex Shephard wrote this week, there are a lot of good reasons to believe Trump's standing with the American people hasn't hit bottom yet, the main one being that the worst is yet to come. The president, Shephard writes, 'is still stubbornly clinging to tariffs, which inevitably will cause product shortages and rising costs in the near future—not to mention a potential recession, the odds of which are worryingly high.'
Last weekend, Apollo Global economist Torsten Slok published a preview of coming attractions in the form of a report documenting what he's calling the imminent 'Voluntary Trade Reset Recession.' As Slok documents, Trump's economy—though quite sluggish—has been boosted by the fact that inventories rose rapidly as firms acted in anticipation of tariffs being imposed. Now that tariffs have arrived, the sugar high is over and collapse is on the way. The most straightforward way of looking at the future is on page 4 of Slok's report.
What we have here is the prelude to the summer of scarcity, coming soon to a retailer near you. We are already well and fully in the stage where activity at our ports falls off a cliff. As TNR's Tim Noah wrote this week:
This is how it begins. The recession has arrived in Seattle, with cargo shipments down 60 percent. Los Angeles will be next. As recently as November, the Los Angeles Times reported that cargo traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach reached record highs. But last week it quoted the port's executive director, Gene Seroka, predicting that 'in two weeks' time, arrivals will drop by 35 percent.' The reason, Seroka said, was that 'essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased, and cargo coming out of Southeast Asia locations is much softer than normal.'
From here, Tim says, there will be less cargo to ship across the country, and inevitably, fewer people employed to do that work. Already, UPS has laid off 20,000 workers because of 'current macro-economic uncertainty' that I really think wasn't all that uncertain when Trump was reelected. This only highlights another grim reality: Even if Trump called off his tariffs tomorrow, much of the coming mayhem is baked into our future, as it would take a substantial amount of time to restart the global shipping machine. 'Expect ships to sit offshore, orders to be canceled, and well-run generational retailers to file for bankruptcy,' says Slok.
The latter half of that prediction may well be the more devastating part. As Marketwatch's Steve Goldstein highlighted, Slok said that 'small businesses that account for more than 80 percent of employment and capital expenditure don't have the working capital to pay tariffs.' In other words, Trumpnomics will soon be best known for that which is absent: products on the shelves of retailers, and businesses on the streets where you live, now shuttered.
Here is where the Wall Street versus Main Street divide is going to be keenly illuminated as Trump's tariffs start the economic bloodletting. The White House has rather persistently explained away the turmoil its tariffs have wrought as a harm done only to high-flying financiers, and claimed that the benefits to ordinary people would soon emerge. A day after he got hit with a hundred dreadful evaluations of his first 100 days, Trump was spinning out on Truth Social, promising that the boom was on the wing.
But even as the stock markets have pitched and yawed as investors cling to their naïve beliefs that Trump has a plan (he doesn't), those plying their trade on Main Street are planning for a different sort of boom. To hear Casey Ames—the founder of Harkla, a small, 10-person firm in Idaho that sells products for special needs children—tell it, Trump's tariffs have already forced him to make some grim considerations.
Ames told the Idaho Statesman that his company was set to have a banner year. 'We had just hired more people, and we were forecasting a really good year, even with the initial Trump tariffs,' he said. Now, however, he's facing a massive hike in the amount of import taxes he'll have to pay, from $26,000 to $346,000. With no domestic manufacturer capable of supplying the same goods, and knowing that even modest price hikes could crater sales, Ames is suddenly facing a situation where he may have to lay off employees.
Ames has garnered a lot of attention for sharing his experiences on social media, taking his audience behind the curtain to reveal what small-business owners have to expect as the summer of scarcity begins. Over at The New York Times, where they've been doing a long-running bit where Frank Luntz interviews the 14 dumbest voters in America, this fissure recently emerged: Meagan, the focus group's lone small-business owner, told Luntz that the tariffs were a 'very, very scary thing' and that she was, as a result, in 'crisis mode.' If reality has started to penetrate Luntz's Delulu Conclave, we're all in for a world of hurt.
And that's probably the most dreadful reckoning, as we mark the 100th day of Trump's second term. Trump's collapse in public opinion polling—along with the fact that he's not likely to reverse many of his worst decisions or repair the things he's broken—has probably set his presidency on the road to ruin. But if Trump has truly sown the seeds of his own undoing, it will be ordinary Americans who reap the proceeds of that dire harvest first, in the form of lost livelihoods and scuppered wealth. It's going to be a rough summer—and many seasons thereafter, until one day we finally hit the nadir of Trumpian despair.This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here. If you're a small-business owner with a story to tell about how tariffs are impacting your bottom line, contact my colleague Grace Segers.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


San Francisco Chronicle
18 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
US and China are holding trade talks in London after Trump-Xi phone call
LONDON (AP) — High-level delegations from the United States and China are meeting in London on Monday to try and shore up a fragile truce in a trade dispute that has roiled the global economy, A Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng is due to meet U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at an undisclosed location in the city. The talks are due to last at least a day. They follow negotiations in Geneva last month that brought a temporary respite in the trade war. The two countries announced May 12 they had agreed to a 90-day suspension of most of the 100%-plus tariffs they had imposed on each other in an escalating trade war that had sparked fears of recession. Since then, the U.S. and China have exchanged angry words over advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence, 'rare earths' that are vital to carmakers and other industries, and visas for Chinese students at American universities. President Donald Trump spoke at length with Chinese leader Xi Jinping by phone last Thursday in an attempt to put relations back on track. Trump announced on social media the next day that trade talks would be held on Monday in London. 'We are a nation that champions free trade and have always been clear that a trade war is in nobody's interests, so we welcome these talks,' the British government said in a statement.


CNBC
23 minutes ago
- CNBC
China and U.S. trade officials to hold talks in London
U.S. President Donald Trump's top trade officials are meeting their Chinese counterparts in London on Monday for talks aimed at resolving an ongoing trade dispute between the world's two largest economies. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are representing the U.S. China's foreign ministry said on Saturday that Vice Premier He Lifeng, Beijing's lead trade negotiator, will be in the U.K. between June 8-13, and that a meeting of the "China-U.S. economic and trade consultation mechanism" would take place. The talks come after Trump last week said that he had held a lengthy phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping as both look to avert a full-blown trade war. Diplomatic efforts by both sides have ramped up after weeks of heightened trade tension and uncertainty after Trump announced sweeping import tariffs on China and other trading partners in April. Beijing retaliated, and a tit-for-tat escalation in duties ensued before both sides agreed in Geneva in May to temporarily slash duties and facilitate talks. At the time, the U.S. tariff on Chinese imports was cut from 145% to 30% , while China's levies on U.S. imports were lowered from 125% to 10%. China and the U.S. have since repeatedly accused each other of violating the Geneva agreement, with Washington saying Beijing was slow to approve the export of additional critical minerals to the U.S., while China criticized the U.S. imposing new restrictions on Chinese student visas and additional export restrictions on chips. U.S. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Sunday said that the London talks would focus on moving forward with the Geneva agreement, noting the two sides' strategic interests in each other's markets.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's Endless Flip-Flops Reveal His Recklessness
THERE'S NO ESCAPING the pattern in this run of recent headlines: 'Trump reverses plan to close more than 30 mine safety offices' 'Here are the 22 times he's changed his mind on tariffs' 'Trump reverses USDA office closures' 'Reversing on layoffs, National Weather Service adding staff' Plus, this whole set: 'Trump turns sharply on Musk'; 'Trump threatens to cut Musk's government contracts'; 'Trump, White House aides signal a possible détente with Musk'; 'Trump tells CNN he's 'not even thinking about' Musk and won't speak to him 'for a while'; 'Trump wants to get rid of the Tesla he bought to show support for Elon Musk.' That was all in less than a week, and telescoped to just 48 hours for the Trump-Musk blowup-détente-never-mind cycle. This is the bris you never wanted to attend, the circumcision you would never be able to unsee. And don't blame me for that metaphor, blame John Oliver. In late April, the Last Week Tonight host worked himself into a hilarious (and entirely warranted) frenzy over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s mass destruction of the Department of Health and Human Services. Asked about various program cuts on CBS, RFK Jr.'s answered with variations on 'I didn't know that, that's something that we'll look at.' After the fact. Because weighing programs and people on the merits beforehand 'takes too long and you lose political momentum,' the nation's top public health official said. Oliver's take: 'The health secretary should not be learning what he just did like some guy at a bachelor party being told what happened the night before. 'Do you not remember, bro? You spoke French well, then you pissed on a grave, fucked a bike rack, and cut $750,000 of research money for kid diabetes! You went wild!'' A photo of a mohel about to circumcise a baby boy then shows up onscreen. 'The rules for restructuring HHS should be the same as the ones for a bris!' Oliver almost shouts, his arms pumping, his voice rising, his eyes practically popping out of his head. 'It is crucially important to know exactly what you are cutting! Speed is just not the most important thing!' Or, as any seamstress or carpenter would tell you, measure twice, cut once. Join now EVEN BEFORE MUSK BRANDISHED a chainsaw, moved fast and broke much of the government, no one paying even an iota of attention would have expected Trump to be a model (mohel?) of careful consistency. Still, the speed and significance of the reversals has been shocking, and they appear to be standard operating procedure. In other words, we can expect them to continue until Trump exits the White House, whenever that is. One of the first and worst moments came when the Department of Energy discovered it had fired hundreds at the agency that oversees the nuclear weapons stockpile. Oops. And then had trouble finding them to hire them back. Oops again. Cancel foreign student visas? Require in-person Social Security visits? Fire a thousand National Park Service workers? Close more than thirty mine safety offices? Offload seven thousand Internal Revenue Service workers, hobbling its ability to collect taxes? Never mind times five. Court orders played a role in some of these reversals, but many others arose from delusional thinking (about phone fraud running rampant at Social Security, though there was hardly any) or magical thinking (as in, who needs nuclear stockpile safety overseers, or rangers at national parks that fuel local economies, or the people who know how to make sure taxes owed are taxes paid). The breaking point for me was an NPR story (yes, the NPR that's currently on Trump's chopping block) about the National Weather Service. Who knew we needed to know the weather? Not the DOGE crew. Who knew America has a hurricane season? Possibly not the nation's disaster aid chief. Who assumed AI would save the day, not realizing that AI can't function without the data produced by the federal government and its actual human employees? Apparently not Musk's tech bros. Who knew that Americans might want or need weather information outside of business hours? And really, who could have predicted that the NWS would now be hiring to fill in gaps left when five hundred people were fired? Or that many of the applicants will probably be fired probationary employees reapplying for their old jobs? That's what a union official told NPR. I've gotten this far without mentioning TACO, the Trump Always Chickens Out acronym that Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined to describe investment strategy amid Trump's constant tariff flip-flops. Trump hates the phrase, but if the flip-flop fits. . . And it does. Very well. Share TO LONGTIME POLITICAL OBSERVERS, by which I mean those of us so old we remember pre-MAGA times, it seems strange that the constant flip-flops have not ruined, scarred, or even dented Trump. Nothing has, and nothing probably will, as we've seen all too often. In this case, maybe it's because everyone already knows he's so deeply flawed, or because his decisions are so terrible that flipping in a different direction is all to the good. Especially if you're a savvy financial player who buys low every time a Trump-made disaster strikes. Because, TACO. My context here is the 2004 John Kerry presidential campaign, which I covered as a reporter on his bus and plane. Maybe it was a simpler time, or maybe Republicans were simply ruthless in driving home a message, but one unfortunate turn of phrase turned Kerry—a combat veteran—into a 'flip-flopper' who didn't support the troops. It was truly a doozy of a sentence, the classic 'I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it.' 'I had one of those inarticulate moments,' Kerry said. He tried to explain. He wanted the expenditure funded at least in part by rolling back some of George W. Bush's tax cuts. But the phrase conveyed weakness and dithering, and Team Bush made sure it stuck. They even sold Kerry flip-flops at the Republican convention that year. The National Museum of American History owns a pair as part of its collection: It's a safe bet that those anti-Kerry flip-flop shoes will survive the coming cultural culling as Trump tries to remake the Smithsonian museums in the image of MAGA and himself. It's also a safe bet that the museum won't be adding Trump flip-flops in future years. It would be too exhausting to create souvenir flip-flops for every Trump flip-flop—and you'd need an entire museum to house them all. Share this article with a friend or family member, or post it to social media: Share