Yahoo Finance

As President Trump notches 100 days in office, we want to break down how the economy and voters are responding to his second term so far. Joining me now, we've got Yahoo Finance's Washington correspondent, Ben Werschkul, and senior columnist Rick Newman. Guys, great to get the gang back together here. Ben, I want to start with you. How is Trump responding to the underperformance of the stock market since he took office?

For sure, yeah. So, uh, the White House is going all out this week on their hundred days, but the one sort of huge fly in the ointment here is the stock market, which is down 8%, the S&P is down 8% since inauguration day. And I'm a, I'm a bit of a glutton for punishment, so I went back and looked at basically every time Trump and his aides have talked about the market over these first hundred days to kind of suss out some trends, and I found three that I think are, are telling about kind of how Trump approaches it. The first one is essentially a case that this was the plan all along. Trump described that the drop, the drop right after liberation day is "expected," and it's sort of part of a larger argument from them that this is part of a transition, that it's going to, that's a short-term downturn in the stock market that's going to go up. The other thing that's interesting is a real focus on other subjects. You hear a lot more about DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company that did rattle markets in January. United Healthcare earnings have come up as, as other reasons for the declines, even though I think it's sort of clear that tariffs are the huge driver here from him. And then the third is a kind of untrumpian refrain about how maybe the stock market isn't as important as it has been. This, this is a kind of, uh, this happens now and again, it kind of tends to last until the next up day when Trump tends to revert to form and, and tout any time the market goes up, even though those days are few and far between. The through line here is that basically, even as we had a stage in this first hundred days where Trump was clearly prioritizing tariffs over the market and the market reaction, he has reverted to form a little bit in the last few, in the last few weeks to, to really kind of dial back and blink on, on certain elements of his tariffs, which have a clear market impact that he likes.

Well, Rick, I want to bring you in because, as Ben said, the fly in the lemon, I, I wonder to what extent you think the, uh, survey data and the voter approval ratings are starting to become perhaps a bigger fly in the lemon than the stock market.

Right. Uh, Trump's approval rating has declined somewhat. It, it hasn't collapsed, uh, but we're definitely seeing some notable changes. One of the things that I noticed the most, I compare what's going on with Trump to, uh, many prior presidents. We've got data going all the way back to the 1970s. Uh, and Trump's approval rating, uh, is really the only one that has gone, kind of gone straight down since he, since he took office. Um, Joe Biden at this point, uh, his approval rating was 57%, and Trump has fallen down from about 48 at the beginning to about 40%. Uh, worth pointing out that, um, Trump's approval on handling of the economy is now a net negative. I mean, that's basically the thing that got him elected in 2024 is voters thought he would do a better job of getting, uh, by the inflation of the Biden presidency under control, and that is flipping. And, uh, this is all happening before the worst effects of the tariffs actually come into effect. I mean, we're not seeing the price increases yet because a lot of the stuff on store shelves was ordered before the tariffs went into effect. We're not seeing product shortages yet, which seems likely to happen. Uh, some of the other problems. So, Trump is on a downward trajectory, and it seems like it's probably going to continue.

All right, great overview there, Rick and Ben. Thank you both so much for joining us this morning. Appreciate it. Thank you.