Americans' Economic Mood Depends on Who's President

You can ask two Americans about the state of their country’s economy and, depending on who you ask, you’re likely to get two completely different answers. The country, its leadership and large parts of the population have become so stuck in partisanship that Americans’ views of the economy largely depend on who is in control of the White House.

Looking at the past 10 years of results from the University of Michigan’s monthly Index of Consumer Sentiment reveals one thing: the mood of Americans regarding the economy and their personal financial situation changes completely the moment a new president is elected. Seemingly regardless of any actual policies or policy outcomes, Republicans are upbeat about the economy whenever a Republican president is in charge, while the opposite is true for Democrats.

After having spent the better part of Biden’s four years in office talking about the “disastrous Biden economy”, President Trump has been hailing his economic achievements since returning to the White House. His supporters largely followed his lead, visible in a sudden uptick in the Consumer Sentiment Index among Republicans, while the mood among supporters of the Democratic party soured in no time.

So what happened over the past 15 months to warrant such a sharp turn in people’s perceptions of the economy? Well, not that much. While President Trump has made sweeping policy changes, first and foremost raising tariffs across the board, the actual outcome is not dissimilar to the last year of Biden’s presidency: real GDP growth slowed to 2.1 percent in 2025, down from 2.8 percent in 2024. The unemployment rate edged up from 4.2 percent in November 2024, the month Trump was re-elected, to 4.4 percent in February 2026. Inflation, Americans’ biggest pain point, cooled from 2.7 percent to 2.4 percent during the same timeframe, but the war in Iran and its effect on oil and gas prices threatens to undo much of that progress.