The promised Trump tariffs will lead to another trade war that will push prices higher and cost the economy nearly a million jobs.
But low-income voters, who will be the first affected by the higher prices and the job losses, still sided with Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, because they let themselves be convinced that he’s better on the economy.
“Even though the economy is doing much better than it was two years ago, people don’t feel like they’re doing better,” said Virginia Tech economic expert Jadrian Wooten.
Which means they don’t remember the impact of the trade war that Trump initiated in 2018. The tariffs at the heart of that pushed GDP down a full point, according to several independent analyses, and were particularly disastrous for the agricultural sector, which required more than $12 billion in bailouts to keep the farm industry afloat.
But Fox News didn’t remind you of that, and four and five and six years ago, that’s a long time to remember how a guy with no business sense did his level best to screw up the good thing that he’d been handed by the Barack Obama administration.
What low-income voters impacted most by the post-pandemic inflation remember is, those were tough times, and more recent.
“While the technical measures — things like GDP growth, inflation, and unemployment rates — have been showing improvement over the past two years, a lot of people’s day-to-day experiences are telling them something completely different,” Wooten said.
According to exit poll data, 45 percent of people with total family income under $30,000 voted for Trump, and Trump got 53 percent of the vote of people with household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000.
Extrapolating from that data, that’s 20.6 million votes – more than a quarter of the total overall who voted for Trump – from people in households that make less than $50,000 a year.
Trump won this demographic by 3.5 million votes.
By the time the final count is done in California, his margin overall in the popular vote is going to be in the range of just under 3 million votes.
His margin of victory came with low-income voters.
You can guess who will be the first ones to feel the effects of the next Trump tariffs.
The average household is projected to feel a $4,000 impact in terms of higher prices on everyday household items from the tariffs, and it’s jobs on the lower rungs of the economic ladder that are most at risk from the recession that the tariffs will bring.
“Understanding the economy is about more than just numbers. It’s about people and their experiences,” Wooten said.
You get what you vote for.
Video: Low-income voters just voted themselves into hardship
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Chris Graham
