WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's immigration policies were deeply unpopular in his first term. Now, immigration is the area in which voters most approve of his second-term performance.
Trump's advisers are betting that his gamble on tariffs will pay off in a similar way in time, rewriting the political rules, as well as global rules, to the United States' lasting advantage, they say — as Trump faces broad skepticism over the issue in current polling.
Tariffs on major U.S. trading partners, including close allies, have been a defining feature of Trump's second term, and more are coming: He has declared April 2 America’s “Liberation Day” to establish reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners that have their own levies on U.S. imports, overturning decades of policy — and threatening chaos for businesses around the world.
“We’ve been ripped off by every country in the world, friend and foe,” Trump said in the Oval Office, predicting that the tariffs would bring in “tens of billions” of dollars. “We’ve been ripped off on trade. We’ve been ripped off on military. We protect people, and they don’t do anything for us.”
It's reminiscent of Trump's hard-line slugfests over immigration in his first term, from his proposed border wall to travel bans that were unpopular with voters and a bipartisan elite. But after President Joe Biden's border policies drew backlash, Trump won enough of that fight to turn immigration into a positive issue in the 2024 election. After his return to the White House in January, the field has shifted to make trade the next frontier, with Trump imposing tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of imports from Mexico, Canada and China and preparing to move forward with additional tariffs on what could be trillions of dollars’ worth of goods. It’s a high-stakes move, pitting him against not just foreign allies but also a domestic coalition of business interests, free-trade advocates and others who have thrived in the status quo.
Analysts warn of chaos: supply chain shocks, higher consumer costs and fractures among Western allies. But Trump is betting big on a future in which voters and history vindicate him as the president who finally made globalization bend to U.S. will and brought jobs back home.
“The second Trump administration will really be graded on how far along he can accomplish this agenda,” said Nick Iacovella, executive vice president of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which supports tariffs. “If the president is successful over these next four years, 10 to 15 years from now we will look back and there will be massive gains in the manufacturing sector of the United States. We’ll see rising incomes, real household income growth will increase, our GDP will increase. We’ll be a manufacturing superpower again.”
At a moment of political risk for Trump, Iacovella argued that volatility in the stock market shouldn’t be considered a measure of health for ordinary voters and that Democrats performed poorly in the last election despite strong returns while the last administration was in office.
“During Biden’s term, the stock market increased by more than 20 points on average, and the American people overwhelmingly just voted Biden out of office and kicked Democrats out of control of Congress,” Iacovella said. “They gave single-handed control to Republicans. So the American people have pretty much made their voice on this clear.”
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist and one of the architects of his populist political movement, noted the political risk for Trump as he has started rolling out his tariff agenda, pointing to elections next week for Wisconsin's Supreme Court and Florida's 6th Congressional District that could reinforce or challenge the agenda.
“If we lose both of those” on April 1, the tariff rollout on April 2 “is going to be quite different,” Bannon said. “You’re already seeing it right now where he is taking potentially more targeted, less blanket, reciprocity. Part of that is the political reality.”
But there is also belief that the politics could shift in the long term. "It’s one thing to bring manufacturing jobs back, but he’s redoing the world system," Bannon said. "The tariffs are the key economic instrument needed to accomplish that."
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he thinks “people will be pleasantly surprised” when reciprocal tariffs are announced on April 2, saying that in “many cases,” these will be “less than the tariff than they have been charging us for decades.”
Critics warn that such tariffs could lead to higher consumer costs and disrupt global supply chains. Stephen Moore, a member of Trump’s economic task force in 2020, argued this week that steel prices are already rising sharply due to tariffs and threaten to place U.S. manufacturing industries at a cost disadvantage. Trump also faces pushback from European allies and murmurs from Japan and South Korea, partners who’d rather tweak the system.
Yet Trump’s team argues the old ways were never sustainable, pointing to manufacturing decline and trade deficits. Instead, it’s wagering that any short-term pain will force a realignment for which future generations will thank him.
FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
FOR SUBSCRIBERSThe debate over AI’s future rages on both coasts
FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
FOR SUBSCRIBERSThe debate over AI’s future rages on both coasts
For now, polling shows flashing red lights on Trump’s trade policies. Tariffs were Trump's worst issue among seven tested in a CNN poll this month, with 61% disapproving of his handling of tariffs. Immigration, meanwhile, was his best, as it was in a recent NBC News poll. That survey found 56% of registered voters in favor of his early performance on immigration and border security.
That wasn’t always the case. During his first term, Trump waded through choppy waters on immigration. An NBC News poll from July 2017 found that 47% disapproved of his immigration and border policies, with 39% in favor. Sentiment grew worse over the following months, with one of Trump’s advisers acknowledging on NBC News' "Meet the Press" that "nobody likes" the separation of migrant children from their parents that was happening at the country’s southern border. By July 2018, his handling received 41% approval, with 51% opposed.
Since then, views have shifted sharply.
In a 41-page document titled “A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System,” Stephen Miran, now the chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in November about his decadeslong “desire to reform the global trading system and put American industry on fairer ground” against the rest of the world and the range of tools his administration could use to get there, whether through tariffs or currency policy.
Amid warnings that tariffs could raise prices on everyday goods for consumers, Miran told Bloomberg this week that “U.S. consumers are flexible. We have options. ... Countries that sell to the United States are inflexible. They’ve only got the United States to sell to. There’s no alternative. So they’re the ones that will bear the burden of these tariffs.”
Goldman Sachs has advised investors that the initial tariff rate may be higher than expected when new measures are announced next week, as the administration hopes to begin negotiations from a strong position.
Yet Trump has hinted at flexibility, saying this week that he could soften his plans for reciprocal tariffs and “may give a lot of countries breaks.”
“I’m embarrassed to charge them what they’ve charged us,” he told reporters Monday.
Using 2017 as the base year, the U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, assessed in a report ordered by Congress that U.S. trade deals boosted U.S. economic output by $88.8 billion, or 0.5%. They increased overall U.S. employment by 485,000 full-time equivalent jobs, or 0.3%, based on a model that assumes the economy is at its long-run full employment level. It’s a modest gain that Iacovella said fuels Trump’s argument that past trade policies have failed U.S. workers, whom he and others said have been harmed by decades of the status quo.
And change is overdue, said one of Trump’s top allies in the Senate. “President Trump knows that American workers have been thrown under the bus for too long,” Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., said in a statement to NBC News. “The Trump tariffs take the ‘kick me’ sign off the backs of these workers and prioritize Americans over foreign interests.”
