Where Donald Trump stands with Americans 15 weeks into his second presidency

President Donald Trump is giving himself a big thumbs-up when it comes to his job performance during his second tour of duty in the White House. “We had the greatest 100 days in the history of our country,” Trump proudly touted on Sunday night, as he spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One.

Trump has aggressively asserted executive authority in his second term, overturning long-standing government policy and making major cuts to the federal workforce through an avalanche of sweeping and controversial executive orders and actions – with some aimed at addressing grievances he has held since his first term.

However, it appears that many Americans are not applauding the job Trump is doing steering the nation. Most, but not all, of the most recent national public opinion surveys indicate Trump’s approval ratings are in negative territory, which is a slide from the president’s poll position when he started his second tour of duty in the White House. An average of the latest national surveys puts the president’s approval rating underwater by around six points.

Trump stood at 44% approval and 55% disapproval in the most recent Fox News national poll, which was conducted April 18-21. The president’s approval rating was also 11 points in the red in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted April 25-27, but a trio of other surveys released in recent days put Trump slightly above water.

Trump does not seem to be bothered by the polls. “Never been a better 100 days,” he said on Sunday. Then, the president blasted what he charged were “fake polls.”

Contributing to the drop in Trump’s poll numbers are increased concerns by Americans over the economy and inflation, which were pressing issues that kept former President Joe Biden’s approval ratings well below water for most of his presidency. Additionally, Trump’s blockbuster tariff announcement a month ago, which sparked a trade war with some of the nation’s top trading partners, triggered a massive sell-off in the financial markets and increased concerns about a recession.

The president’s approval rating on the economy stood at 38% in the Fox News poll, with just a third of respondents approving of the job he was doing handling inflation and tariffs. However, Trump, on Sunday, touted that “inflation is down, all costs are down,” as he pointed to the top issue that landed him back in the White House.

Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist and communicator on Capitol Hill and veteran of the Republican National Committee and the President George W. Bush administration, noted that “the main reason Trump won was to lower prices. Prices haven’t lowered, and polls are reflecting that.” “It makes the politics of tariffs perilous for Trump – if prices rose because of Trump fiat, Biden/Trump voters may desert him,” Heye argued.

Trump’s overall approval rating is close to where he stood 100 days into his first term in office, in 2017, when he stood at 45% approval in Fox News polling. So how does Trump stack up against his presidential predecessors?

“John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower had the highest first-quarter average ratings, with both registering above 70%, while Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan averaged between 60% and 69%. George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Joe Biden, and Bill Clinton had similar average ratings of 55% to 58% in their first quarters,” Gallup noted in a poll released two weeks ago on presidential approval ratings.

Gallup highlighted that “Trump is the only president to have sub-50% average approval ratings during a first quarter in office.” However, enjoying promising approval ratings out of the gate does not guarantee a positive and productive presidency.

Carter’s poll numbers sank into negative territory less than two years into his presidency, and he was resoundingly defeated in his bid for re-election in 1980. Biden stood at 54% approval in Fox News polling 100 days into office, with his numbers hovering in the low-to-mid-50s during the first six months of his single term as president. However, Biden’s numbers sank into negative territory in the late summer and autumn of 2021, in the wake of his much-criticized handling of the turbulent U.S. exit from Afghanistan and amid soaring inflation and a surge of migrants crossing into the U.S. along the nation’s southern border with Mexico.