{"id":647384,"date":"2026-05-03T18:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T18:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/647384\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T18:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T18:09:08","slug":"young-americans-have-soured-on-trump-steven-greenhouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/647384\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Americans have soured on Trump | Steven Greenhouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republicans rejoiced when far more young voters than expected<\/a> backed Donald Trump in 2024, with many of them moved by<\/a> Trump\u2019s grandiose promises, such as his vow to \u201cbuild the greatest economy<\/a> in the history of the world\u201d. But Republicans should be alarmed that so many 18- to 29-year-olds have soured on Trump \u2013 his approval rating with that group has sunk from 48% in January 2025 to between just 25%<\/a> and 33% in recent <\/a>months<\/a>, according to polls by YouGov\/the Economist.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t be a surprise that millions of young Americans have turned against Trump, considering that he has failed to deliver on so many promises, most notably his vow to reduce prices on day one<\/a>. For young people, inflation is the No 1 economic issue<\/a>, far outpacing other issues, and they very much wanted Trump to focus on affordability, but Trump has focused on everything but affordability. He\u2019s focused instead on his glitzy, $400m ballroom<\/a>, his war against Iran<\/a> (which has increased gas prices<\/a>), and his tariff wars (which have increased overall inflation). In bad news for Republicans, 78% of Americans under age 30 disapprove<\/a> of how Trump is handling inflation.<\/p>\n

Fed up with the status quo under Joe Biden, many young people expected great things from Trump, but 15 months into his second term, many feel let down, not least because the economy has taken a bad turn. Inflation has increased, job growth has slowed, and housing, healthcare and higher education have all gotten more expensive. What\u2019s more, young Americans complain that the job market stinks<\/a> for their age group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings are pretty chaotic lately<\/a>,\u201d Lizabel, a young voter who backed Trump, said in a focus group for the Bulwark<\/a>. \u201cA lot of people are struggling to find jobs. A lot of people are feeling kind of pessimistic about what things are going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond pocketbook issues, many young Americans are upset by Trump\u2019s authoritarian actions and never-ending chaos: his deeply unpopular war against Iran, his sending masked ICE agents into major cities, his posting a picture<\/a> of himself as a Jesus-like figure, his demolishing the East Wing of the White House, and his insulting everyone from Pope Leo<\/a> to supreme court justices<\/a> to other countries\u2019 leaders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just 13% of Americans 18 to 29 say the US is headed in the right direction<\/a>, while 57% say things are on the wrong track, according to a Harvard Youth Poll released in December. In a sign of profound pessimism, just 30% believe<\/a> they will be better off financially than their parents. Many young people are no doubt upset that the inflation rate now, 3.3%<\/a>, is higher than when Biden left office, even though candidate Trump promised he would end inflation<\/a> and reduce prices on day one.<\/a> Coffee prices are up 18.7%<\/a> over the past year, beef jumped 12.1%, and fresh vegetables, 7.5%. Hospital costs have climbed 6.4% and electricity by 4.6%, while gas prices have soared<\/a> by over 45% since Trump began bombing Iran.<\/p>\n

In an effort to woo young voters, Trump said he\u2019d work to make college more affordable<\/a>, but since he returned to office, tuition has continued to climb<\/a>, especially at private colleges. At the same time, Trump is pushing for deep cuts in student aid<\/a>, a move that will hurt non-affluent students in particular.<\/p>\n

Trump also said he would lower health costs<\/a>, but those costs also continue to head skyward<\/a>. Making things worse, Trump\u2019s \u201cbig beautiful bill\u201d, along with his blocking new Obamacare subsidies, will cause 10 million Americans to lose health insurance<\/a> and cause premiums to more than double<\/a> on average for 20 million Americans,<\/a> many of them under 30.<\/p>\n

Even though Trump promised to create \u201cmillions and millions of jobs<\/a>\u201d, especially blue-collar ones, many young Americans are worried to panicking about their job prospects. I\u2019ve heard too many stories of young people who have sent out 200 job applications and heard back from only two or three employers \u2013 and sometimes from none. Since Trump returned to office, the US has added a puny 26,000 jobs per month on average, one-fourth the rate during Biden\u2019s last year in office. Not only has Trump utterly failed to create millions of jobs, but in bad news for blue-collar Americans, the US has lost 82,000 factory jobs<\/a> since his inauguration.<\/p>\n

The New York Times wrote recently<\/a>: \u201cThis is the worst spring for young degree holders [to find jobs] since the depths of the pandemic.\u201d And it\u2019s not as if Trump is doing anything to improve the job market for young Americans. He has sabotaged the economy by causing gas prices to soar, by imposing his unpopular tariffs, and by creating nonstop chaos and uncertainty. As any business school student knows, corporations that hope to expand and hire want predictability, not perpetual chaos.<\/p>\n

Many young Americans fear that AI will wipe out millions of jobs and make life tough for people entering the job market. That\u2019s no doubt one reason many young people think the nation is on the wrong track. But Trump has been indifferent to those concerns. He hasn\u2019t lifted a finger to protect workers who might lose jobs to AI; rather he has done everything he can to help AI companies grow<\/a> and build data centers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt kind of boils down to this \u2026 \u2018Is the president making life better for young people in this country or not?\u2019\u201d Rachel Janfaza, who researches youth voting trends, told the Hill<\/a>. \u201cA lot of young people feel like he\u2019s not.\u201d Among young people, Trump\u2019s net approval rating has plunged from +5 when he was inaugurated to way underwater, to between -27 and -47 in recent weeks<\/a>, according to YouGov.<\/p>\n

Trump has broken many other promises, including that he wouldn\u2019t plunge the country into needless wars, that he\u2019d cut energy and electricity prices in half<\/a>, and that he\u2019d increase the number of apprenticeships<\/a> to more than 1m. And many young people are no doubt upset that he has gone all out to turbocharge the fossil fuel industry and thereby worsen global warming.<\/p>\n

That so many young people have soured on Trump is one of the most promising developments for Democrats. That should help Democrats do far better with young voters in the midterm elections than Kamala Harris did in 2024. Among voters 18 to 29, Harris beat Trump by 19 percentage points, according to Pew Research<\/a>, but she still badly underperformed with that group. Her margin over Trump with that group was 11 points less than Hillary Clinton\u2019s in 2016, and 7 points less than Biden\u2019s in 2020 .<\/p>\n

In an era when it\u2019s often difficult to cut all through the bull, it\u2019s significant that so many young voters are seeing through Trump. Many are realizing that Candidate Trump made lots of great-sounding promises to help young people, but has done next to nothing to deliver on them. When young Americans think of Trump, they should think: promises made, promises broken.<\/p>\n

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republicans rejoiced when far more young voters than expected backed Donald Trump in 2024, with many of them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-647384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}