Trump's Liabilities

Democracy and Affordability

The king is displeased. And when the king is displeased, someone loses their job. At least it’s not as bad as it used to be. In the old days when the king was displeased, you could lose something more important than your job.

Erika McEntarfer, formerly commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, certainly displeased King Trump. Trump claimed she manipulated the jobs numbers for political reasons. He argued, with no evidence, that ``the numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.’’ Off with her job!

What’s the secret behind President Trump’s assumption of imperial authority? He’s not wildly popular. In fact, Trump has never won majority approval in the polls. Trump got elected twice with less than a majority of the popular vote (46.1 percent in 2016, 49.8 percent in 2024). His mandate came from the electoral college, which was designed to create the impression of a popular mandate. (In the 2000 presidential election, for example, George W. Bush led Al Gore by .009 percent of the popular vote in Florida. That gave Bush all 25 of Florida’s electoral votes – and victory.)

President Trump’s latest job approval rating is just 37 percent in the Gallup poll. Ronald Reagan’s job approval averaged 53 percent.

Trump’s support may not be broad but it is intense. He gets nearly unanimous support from Republicans (89 percent) but almost no support from Democrats (2 percent).

Trump’s secret is that he has an army ready to do his bidding. His MAGA army keeps Republicans in line by threatening to bring wavering supporters down in GOP primaries. Trump’s not-so-secret weapon is his image of strength. Voters regard Trump as a strong leader. No other politician in either party can match 79-year-old Trump when it comes to strength.

Trump defeated two women – Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Kamala Harris in 2024. Trump lost to a man, Joe Biden, in 2020. Four years later, Biden came across as too weak to run for a second term.

Democrats are trying to deal with their image problem by actively recruiting military veterans to run for Congress. Veterans, they hope, with a heroic record.

President Trump is facing two political liabilities. One is growing concern over the state of democracy in the U.S. The Reuters-IPSOS poll reports that in 2025, ``political extremism and threats to democracy’’ has led ``the economy, unemployment and jobs’’ as the most important problem facing the country, even though most voters believe the economy will go into recession in the next year.

Democracy has become a core partisan issue. The problem is Trump’s autocratic temperament. Almost all Democrats in the IPSOS poll (92 percent) believe President Trump has exceeded his authority as president. In other words, he’s too strong. Twenty percent of Republicans agree.

What brings the democracy issue to a head is Trump’s demand that Texas reapportion its congressional districts to give Republicans a larger majority in the House of Representatives. In other words, create more safe Republican House seats in next year’s midterm election. President Trump’s ability to run the country without interference by Congress depends on his ability to hold what is now a painfully narrow majority in Congress (7 House seats).

Texas is a solidly Republican state. Every one of its statewide elected officials is a Republican. Republicans control the state legislature and hold a 27-to-12 seat advantage in the Texas House delegation in Washington.

While Republicans also have the majority in the Texas legislature, more than 50 Democratic legislators have fled the state in order to deny Republicans the quorum they need to pass a mid-decade redistricting measure. ``It’s no longer just about Texas,’’ the Democratic leader of the Texas legislature said. ``This is about the future of the nation.’’

Meanwhile Democrats in heavily Democratic states states like California and New York are talking about mid-decade redistricting plans of their own. The chairman of the Democratic National Committee declared, ``This is not the Democratic Party of your grandfather, which would bring a pencil to a knife fight. This is a new Democratic Party. We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight.’’ Asked why Texas Democrats were not taking ``the high road’’ in the redistricting fight, Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project replied, ``The high road’s not available to us any more.’’

While democracy is a key issue for Democrats, the economy is becoming a more dangerous issue for Republicans. That’s because the Trump GOP now has a working class base, and the economy is always a key issue to blue collar voters. In the late July Yahoo News/YouGov poll, President Trump’s rating on handling the economy has turned sharply negative – particularly the President’s handling of the cost of living (63 to 31 percent disapproval). Increasing tariffs is the President’s principal economic policy initiative, and the public does not like it (57 percent disapprove of President Trump’s handling of trade and tariffs).

Along with ``democracy,’’ ``affordability’’ is creeping up as a key issue for Democrats. In June, Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim socialist, won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City by running on the ``affordability’’ issue. ``My administration will be Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,’’ Mamdani declared.

Trump’s tariffs – the highest in more than 100 years – are creating a major issue of controversy for Republicans. Tariffs are taxes, and Republicans have always had a powerful aversion to tax hikes. Remember what happened to the first President Bush after he promised, ``Read my lips: no new taxes’’? A Republican senator (Josh Hawley of Missouri) introduced the American Worker Rebate Act which proposed sending tariff rebate checks up to $2400 to U.S. households.

Tax revenue from tariffs is beginning to pour in to the U.S. treasury. President Trump’s response? ``We have so much money coming in, we’re thinking about a little rebate. But the big thing we want to do is pay down debt.’’ As of August 8, the national debt is more than $37 trillion, or over $100,000 per person.

Think of tariffs as a national sales tax, akin to the ``value added tax’’ that many European governments add on to the price of goods. Before the ratification of the 16<sup>th</sup> Amendment to the Constitution in 1913, which authorized the federal income tax, tariffs (``customs’’) were the principal source of revenue for the federal government.

The income tax is a ``progressive’’ tax. The higher your income, the higher your income tax rate. Tariffs are regressive. Everyone pays the same tariff no matter how much money they make. Tariffs are not based on ``ability to pay.’’

Revenue from tariffs is likely to be much smaller than revenue from income taxes. That may be why President Trump said, ``We’re going to cut taxes for the people of this country. . . . It’s possible we’ll do a complete tax cut, because I think the tariffs will be enough to cut all of the income tax.’’

The federal government raises about $3 trillion a year from income taxes. The U.S. imports around $3 trillion of goods every year. So tariffs would have to be at least 100 percent on all imported goods to raise enough money to replace income taxes. Not very likely.