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economy
New Polling Shows That the Bottom Has Fallen Out for Trump’s Economic Job Performance
These numbers are so dramatic that they argue for a reboot of the Trump administration’s economic messaging.
Dec 12, 2025
Polling released by the AP/NORC on December 11 shows that the bottom has fallen out for President Donald Trump on his job performance on the economy. Just under a third (31%) approve of Trump’s work on the economy. This is a nine-point drop and is the lowest that the AP/NORC has recorded in either Trump’s first or second terms. Fully 80% of Independent voters give Trump negative scores on his economic stewardship. As you could have guessed, Democrats are nearly unanimous in giving Trump failing grades on the economy (93%). What is quite significant is that 29% of Republicans give Trump failing grades on the economy.
Voters’ perceptions of the economy are also very pessimistic. Overall, 68% say that the economy is in poor shape. Both Democrats (84%) and Independents (80%). Republicans offer a more mixed picture (56% good, 44% poor).
The most significant part of the AP/NORC findings is not Trump’s scores on the economy as they have been poor for some time. What is striking is that on his two signature issues of crime and immigration, Trump fares very poorly. Fully 60% of voters disapprove of Trump’s work on immigration including 70% of Independents. Trump’s grades on immigration are boosted by his GOP support (80% approve, 19% disapprove).
Only in relative terms, does Trump fare better on the issue of crime. Forty-three (43%) approve. Two-thirds (66%) of Independents give Trump failing grades on the economy. As was the case with immigration, Trump’s scores on crime are boosted by his strong support among Republicans (80% approve, 19% disapprove).
If the Trump administration is looking at the data honestly, they must be troubled that Independents and Democratic are on question after questions almost in alignment on their negative assessment of Trump’s job as president.
There is literally no good news for Trump or for that matter the GOP in the AP/NORC polling. These numbers are so dramatic that they argue for a reboot of the Trump administration’s economic messaging. Trump’s ratings on crime and immigration are a real problem, but what really threatens Trump are voters’ perceptions of his economic stewardship. Trump won the presidency in large part because voters thought that he would do a better job on the economy than Vice President Kamala Harris.
Rather than change course on the economy, the Trump administration seems likely to continue to blame the Biden administration for the state of the economy. There is nothing in polling data that would indicate that this will work. Furthermore, Trump’s remarks in Pennsylvania on December 9 also indicate that he is not aware or willing to accept voters’ perceptions of his handling of the economy. This is a clear warning sign of a Democratic landslide in 2026.
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5 Lessons From the End of the Larry Summers Era
Summers’ influence was immense, but so were his blind spots. It’s time for economics that values people and the planet over power and prestige.
Dec 03, 2025
The era of Larry Summers’ dominance in American economics is over. It’s a good moment to take stock.
Summers has been just about everywhere money talks. From Harvard to the Treasury, through the Clinton and Obama White Houses, onto Wall Street, and into think tanks and policy networks that shape the nation’s economy—including the Center for American Progress, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution—he has left a mark few economists ever achieve.
Yet his career also shows the risks of concentrating authority in economists whose prestige, ambition, and attachment to abstract models can outweigh attention to real lives. Time and again, he let the interests of financial elites, spreadsheet obsession, and ingrained biases create troubling blind spots. The consequences for ordinary people and the planet simply faded into the background.
The silver lining: Summers’ record offers a clear road map for reform, highlighting what economics should not be: a discipline that prioritizes prestige, profit, and elegant equations. And it points toward what it could be: smarter, fairer, more accountable, and genuinely focused on human well-being and the Earth we inhabit.
Lesson 1: Sexism is Costly
Let’s be blunt: Economists who don’t see women as equals weaken the very core of their discipline.
Tasked with understanding how people, resources, and institutions interact, they can’t model societies, predict outcomes, or craft effective policy if they don’t accurately perceive half the population. Bias isn’t just a moral failure. It corrupts analysis.
If Summers had respected women’s intellectual authority, he might have heeded Brooksley Born when she pushed to regulate derivatives as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Summers’ comments while president of Harvard suggesting women lack the natural faculties to excel in higher mathematics and science reveal a deeper flaw: outdated, discriminatory, and intellectually sloppy thinking. (Any lingering doubt about his mindset vanishes when you read his 2017 email to Jeffrey Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ in world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51% of population.” A leap beyond casual sexism, this was a bold assertion of women’s intellectual inferiority).
Such attitudes have real consequences for economics, leadership, and policy.
Consider: If Summers had respected women’s intellectual authority, he might have heeded Brooksley Born when she pushed to regulate derivatives as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Instead, he joined forces with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin to shut her down—a disastrous misstep that helped set the stage for the unregulated derivatives boom and the 2008 financial crisis.
America is still paying for that one.
The economics profession itself pays a steep price for sexism. Institute for New Economic Thininkig research by Giulia Zacchia, Orsola Constantini, and Moshen Javdani shows that structural bias in hiring, research evaluation, and theoretical norms pushes women and fresh ideas to the margins, producing models and policies that miss the full picture of how economies really function.
Summers’ personal conduct compounds his professional failings. In the Epstein files, Summers discussed a Chinese female mentee in explicitly sexual terms. He detailed his attraction and referred to the possibility of a sexual relationship, asking Epstein whether it was “meaningful” to discuss “the probability of my getting horizontal w peril,” a code name for the woman in question. He speculated about how to make himself seem “invaluable and interesting” to her, implying that intimacy could follow. This behavior obviously violates professional boundaries.
Sexual harassment isn’t just harmful to the people targeted—it hurts businesses, families, and the economy too, as I have documented (Parramore, 2018), while Zacchia and Izaskun Zuazu emphasize the need to challenge the deep-rooted gender inequalities that make harassment possible. Unfortunately, Summers’ sexism proved too deeply rooted to excise.
Summers’ departure opens the door to economics that not only produces more accurate models and better outcomes for society, but fully embraces the talents and insights of female students and economists.
Lesson 2: When Economists Favor Wall Street, America Suffers
Summers’ career offers a clear example of how cozy ties between elite economists and Wall Street create harm.
While president of Harvard (2001-2006), Summers had what colleagues described as a “huge influence over Harvard money matters.” He pushed for a risky investment strategy for the university’s endowment, even though as early as 2002, Iris Mack, an analyst at the Harvard Management Company (HMC), warned Summers’ chief of staff about what she described as “frightening” use of derivatives and inadequate risk-management protocols. But her warnings, and those of Jack Meyer, the head of the endowment, who warned of investments in “stocks, bonds, hedge funds, and private equity,” were disregarded by Summers. (Mack was dismissed, and alleges she was fired for voicing concerns; she later reached a settlement with the university).
Summers’ investment strategy backfired sharply when the 2008 crash hit, costing the university dearly: 27% of its endowment, to be precise. By then, Summers was working at a hedge fund and would soon spin through the revolving door into Barack Obama’s White House.
In another telling episode, Summers shielded his colleague Andrei Shleifer during the scandal over Harvard’s 1990s-era Russia privatization program. Shleifer and associates were found liable by a federal court for using insider access to invest in Russia while advising on US-funded economic programs: a clear conflict-of-interest. Harvard ended up shelling out a $26.5 million settlement, but Shleifer kept his tenured position, thanks in part to Summers’ influence.
Summers’ Wall Street-friendly instincts have reached deeply into policy. During the 1990s and early 2000s, he advocated deregulation and reduced oversight for banks, contributing to the conditions that triggered the 2007-2008 financial meltdown, when millions of regular people lost jobs, homes, and savings. After public office, he continued profiting from that same financial ecosystem, collecting large fees through consulting, speaking engagements, and corporate board positions.
In Wall Street’s corner he remained: In 2023, he pushed the government to guarantee all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, arguing that failing to do so would be a “Lehman-like error,” while downplaying conflicts of interest with firms tied to the bank. He warned against listening to “moral hazard lectures” about bailouts. (It was not reassuring to learn that Summers turned out to have undisclosed ties to firms connected to SVB’s largest depositors).
In 2025, Summers warned that asset prices are “frothy,” but instead of calling for regulations or protections for people who might lose their savings, he framed his concern in a way that would calm investors. His focus seemed to be on keeping financial elites calm above all else.
Summers has consistently emphasized market stability over robust support for working people, advocating Fed policies that favor large banks and investors. Coupled with his continued advisory roles with financial-sector firms (many now lost due to the Epstein files), these moves reinforced a career-long pattern: prioritizing the interests of the wealthy while leaving Main Street to fend for itself.
Which brings us to the next lesson.
3. Working People Must Be Prioritized in Economics
Regrettably, it bears repeating that economics has too often been treated as a game for elites, focused on numbers on paper, financial flows, and abstract deficits, while the jobs, homes, and livelihoods of working people are pushed aside. Summers personifies this very problem.
For example, Summers pushed interest‑rate hikes and emphasized deficit reduction over job creation. As political protégé of deficit‑hawk Rubin, and later as head of the National Economic Council (NEC), under Obama, Summers repeatedly plugged austerity, even at times when stimulus was badly needed to support working people.
In December 2008, a full month before Obama’s inauguration, Summers drafted a 57‑page memo warning of a grim economic outlook, but he also downplayed how severe the downturn could be. That memo laid the foundation for a flawed stimulus plan and economic strategy that prioritized deficit targets over urgent jobs recovery.
Larry Summers’s record on global economic policy offers a revealing portrait of his priorities: market logic over human lives, and financial returns over planetary survival.
The results were stark. Actual job losses far outpaced the administration’s optimistic estimates, and the recovery was painfully slow for millions of Americans. After leaving the NEC, Summers went on to warn against aggressive fiscal support, focusing instead on deficit risk and inflation concerns, often at the expense of middle‑class wage earners trying to get back on their feet.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Summers repeatedly championed what many view as market-first, investor-friendly economic priorities over aggressive support for working-class Americans. In 2021 he blasted the stimulus bill (American Rescue Plan) as “the least responsible macroeconomic policy in 40 years,” warning that huge fiscal spending combined with loose monetary policy was “kindling” an inflation fire.
This neglect of working people is a failure of economics. When economists treat deficits and interest rates as ends in themselves, rather than tools to support lives and livelihoods, they lose the real purpose of economic analysis.
For too long, the rules of economic policy have been written by those fail to understand the stakes of unemployment, insecure work, or debt. Larry Summers isn’t just a powerful economist, he’s also very wealthy: His net worth rocketed from around $400,000 in the mid-1990s to $7-31 million by 2009, largely through high-paid Wall Street consulting, hedge-fund work, and speaking fees. Today, estimates put him at roughly $40-50 million.
Perhaps this background helps explain his longstanding emphasis on austerity over labor-market protections.
4. Economics for the Planet, Not Just Profits
Larry Summers’s record on global economic policy offers a revealing portrait of his priorities: market logic over human lives, and financial returns over planetary survival.
Over decades, he repeatedly helped shape policies that forced vulnerable populations, particularly in developing countries, to subordinate basic needs like health, education, and environmental protection to debt repayment and economic “efficiency.”
One episode has come to symbolize this worldview. In 1991, while serving as chief economist for the World Bank, Summers’ office circulated an internal memo drafted by Lant Pritchet and cosigned by himself, which suggested that dumping toxic waste in developing countries would actually benefit them economically. The memo noted that, because wages and estimated “economic losses” from illness were lower in developing countries, the health costs of pollution would be “cheaper” there than in wealthier nations. Although Pritchett later insisted the memo was merely sarcasm, the fact that it moved through Summers’ office and carried his signature sparked international outrage.
After the memo became public, Summers told a reporter: "I think the best that can be said is to quote La Guardia and say, 'When I make a mistake, it's a whopper.'"
Many agreed. Brazil’s then-Secretary of the Environment Jose Lutzenburger, excoriated Summers’s logic as “perfectly logical but totally insane,” noting that it exemplified “the unbelievable alienation, reductionist thinking, social ruthlessness, and the arrogant ignorance of many conventional ‘economists’ concerning the nature of the world we live in.”
This was not just a one-off. In the 90s, Summers used his power to block meaningful climate action, opposing US participation in Kyoto Protocol. He claimed that rapid greenhouse‑gas reductions could carry “unknowable economic consequences.”
Even when he later moved toward what some considered climate-friendly policies, his proposals revealed much about his real concerns. For instance, in 2017 he backed a modest carbon-pricing scheme, but only if it replaced stronger environmental regulation and came with rebates and border adjustments. In an op-ed titled, “Why we should all embrace a fantastic Republican proposal to save the planet,” he favored “raising the price of carbon and less emphasis on command-and-control regulation.” That approach aligns neatly with the wish lists of deep-pocketed polluters and carries little of the urgency environmental scientists and communities fighting climate disaster demand.
Summers also supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has been widely criticized for undermining environmental regulations in Mexico, weakening labor protections, and allowing corporations to externalize ecological costs across borders. Once again, Summers appeared to prioritize trade liberalization and corporate profits over environmental justice and workers’ rights.
Under Obama, he continued to warn of potential economic risks of aggressive efforts to limit carbon emissions. More recently, in 2022, Summers promoted a World Bank plan to leverage massive new borrowing to address poverty and encourage a “global green transition.” On the surface, this looks progressive, until the focus on financing and efficiency is revealed. Rather than advocating real structural change, Summers continues a pattern of putting capital and market mechanisms over meaningful, just environmental action.
5. A New Beginning
In the big picture, Summers’s retreat leaves both a gap and a long‑overdue opportunity.
More than ever, the US—and the world—needs economists who put real people first: who design policies that protect jobs, homes, and communities; who confront climate change rather than downplay it; who treat women, working people, and marginalized groups as full participants; and who put their focus on social well‑being.
As the 19h‑century critic John Ruskin famously wrote, “The only wealth is life.” Economics must finally reflect that truth (Spear, Parramore, 2015).
We now have a chance to build a life‑centered economics, one that prioritizes human flourishing, environmental stewardship, and equitable opportunity—not just the interests of the elite few.
The opportunity is here. Let’s seize it.
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5 Reasons Trump's Economy Stinks and 10 Things the Dems Should Do About It
The Trump economy is truly sh*tty for most Americans. Democrats need to show America that they can be better trusted to bring prices down and real wages up.
Nov 17, 2025
President Donald Trump claimed last week on social media that “Our economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” and that “grocery prices are way down.
Rubbish.
How do I know he’s lying? Official government statistics haven’t been issued during the shutdown—presumably to Trump’s relief (the White House said Wednesday that the October jobs and Consumer Price Index reports may never come out).
But we can get good estimates of where the economy is now, based on where the economy was heading before the shutdown and recent reports by private data firms.
First, I want to tell you what we know about Trump’s truly sh*tty economy. Then I’ll suggest 10 things that Democrats should pledge to do about it.
1. Prices Continue to Rise as Real Wages Fall
While the cost of living isn’t going up as fast as it did in 2022, consumer prices are still up 27% since the onset of the pandemic. Wages haven’t kept up.
Americans know this. In a recent Harris poll, 62% say the cost of everyday items has climbed over the last month, and nearly half say the increases have been difficult to afford.
Much of this is due to Trump’s tariffs, which are import taxes—paid by American corporations that are now passing many of the costs on to consumers. Even Trump knows this, which is why he’s removing tariffs on coffee, bananas, beef, and other agricultural commodities. But his other tariffs will remain, boosting the costs of everything else.
Every time Trump or his lapdogs in Congress tell Americans that the economy is terrific, they seem more out of touch with reality.
As a result, wages—when adjusted for inflation—have been falling, government and private-sector data show. Since the start of the year, inflation has been rising faster than after-tax pay for lower- and middle-income households, according to the Bank of America Institute.
According to the JPMorganChase Institute, the rate of real income growth has slowed to levels last seen in the early 2010s, when the economy was still recovering from the financial crisis and the unemployment rate was roughly double what it is today.
2. Job Growth Has Stalled
Americans are scared of losing their jobs. In the same recent Harris poll I referred to above, 55% of employed workers say they’re worried they’ll be laid off.
That worry is borne out in the data. Indeed’s job posting index has fallen to its lowest level since February 2021.
The Fed’s Beige Book—which compiles reports from Fed branches all over the country—also shows the job market losing steam.
The latest ADP private-sector data confirms that the labor market continued to weaken in the latter half of October, with more than 11,000 jobs lost per week on average.
Finally, Challenger, Gray & Christmas (a private firm that collects data on workplace reductions) reports that US employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far in 2025. That’s the most layoffs since 2020, when the pandemic slammed the economy, and rivals job cuts during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.
3. Homeowners Are Underwater, and Foreclosures Are Up
Nearly 900,000 homeowners (about 1.6% of all mortgage holders) are now underwater on their mortgages, the highest share in three years. Many of these buyers purchased in 2022-24 with low down payments in markets that have since cooled.
At the same time, filings for home foreclosures are up about 17% since the third quarter last year (according to ATTOM Data Solutions), suggesting more borrowers in trouble.
4. Corporate Profits Continue to Rise
You might think that with all these stresses on American consumers, corporate profits would dip. But in reality, US corporate profits continue to rise, and the stock market continues to hit new highs (although the stock market is wobbly, as I’ll get to in a moment).
As a result, the investor class—the richest 10% of Americans, who own over 90% of the stock market—are reaping big rewards.
How to square this with all the layoffs and so few job openings? Amazon’s profits are through the roof, but it’s laying off 30,000 people.
First, corporations are reluctant to expand and hire because of so much uncertainty about the future, caused in large part by Trump’s tariffs and his expulsion from the US of many workers critical to the agriculture and construction industries.
Secondly, profits are being led by the six major high tech firms, whose monopolistic hold over their markets has given them the power to raise prices.
Third, many corporations are making use of artificial intelligence. AI is boosting business productivity while reducing the demand for workers. We’re seeing that trend mostly in the technology sector, which continues to substitute AI for jobs. But the trend seems to be spreading to other industries.
5. Inequality Is Widening
Put this all together and you get a two-tier economy whose inequality gap is widening.
America has always had a two-tiered economy, but for the last 80 years, the middle class has been in the upper tier along with the wealthy, while the working class and poor have been in the lower one.
Now, the middle class is joining the lower tier. This new reality has huge implications both for the economy and for American politics.
The richest 10% of households—whom I’ve described as the investor class—now account for nearly half of total US spending, thanks to the stock market surge. (Thirty years ago they were responsible for about a third.)
Meanwhile, middle- and lower-income families are pulling back. They’re facing tightening budgets, higher living costs, declining real wages, and a raft of corporate layoffs.
The consequent divergence in spending—with a smaller group of people keeping the economy going—is fueling concerns that the US economy is becoming more fragile.
With the economy so dependent on the richest 10%—who in turn are highly dependent on the stock market—a stock market downturn would raise risk of a serious recession.
6. What the Democrats Must Pledge to America
The Trump economy is truly sh*tty for most Americans. Every time Trump or his lapdogs in Congress tell Americans that the economy is terrific, they seem more out of touch with reality.
Democrats need to show America that they can be better trusted to bring prices down and real wages up.
This means, in my view, promising the following 10 things. These should constitute the Democrats’ pledge to America:
- Trump’s across-the-board tariffs are import taxes that are raising the prices of just about everything American consumers buy. Democrats will eliminate them where their costs to consumers are far higher than any potential benefits in the form of new jobs.
- Another major source of high prices is monopolies—especially in high tech, healthcare, food, and finance. Democrats will vigorously enforce antitrust (anti-monopoly) laws. Giant corporations will be busted up. Mergers or acquisitions by large firms, barred.
- Workers need more bargaining power to get higher wages. Part of the answer is stronger unions. Democrats will make it easier for them to start or join unions.
- The national minimum wage will be raised to $20 an hour. No one who works full time should be in poverty.
- Housing cost increases will be slowed by stopping private equity firms from buying up large tracts of housing and colluding on prices.
- Healthcare costs will be lowered by making Medicare available to everyone.
- Working families will get help with childcare and eldercare.
- They’ll also get paid family leave.
- If adequate-paying jobs are unavailable, workers will also have access to a universal basic income. It won’t make families comfortable, but it will be enough to keep them out of poverty.
- Taxes will be raised on the wealthiest to pay for this.
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