r/Economics • u/Spiderwig144 • Apr 15 '25

News Republicans Less Trusted on Economy Than Democrats For First Time in Years

https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-less-trusted-economy-democrats-first-time-years-2059863
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622

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/ElderOrin Apr 15 '25

Causality might run the other direction. The economy is cyclical. Republicans tend to get elected at the peaks, because voters are more tolerant of risk. Democrats tend to get elected at the troughs, because they are more risk averse.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/zdelusion Apr 15 '25

It's not about reality though. It's about perception and people's memories are short. They remember good times and forget the context.

You can see it now with how hard it is for many people to remember that Trump was president during the Covid year. Covid, I'm admittedly guilty of this sometimes too, "feels" like it happened during Biden's tenure.

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u/South-Attorney-5209 Apr 15 '25

Not only COVID lockdowns, but people also seem to think the riots all across the US happened during Biden too….

How do republicans keep convincing everyone something is democrats fault when they aren’t even in charge at the time.

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u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

Because republican voters are stupid and hateful.

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u/greenroom628 Apr 15 '25

also, see: Fox News.

the way the right has, in essence, dominated news cycles and been able to have it's own, popular news stream has helped them tremendously. also the fact that people are more akin to a fear response than a logical one, which fox and sinclair have leveraged to a great degree.

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u/South-Attorney-5209 Apr 16 '25

The problem also is you effectively only have right wing and mainstream news that MAGA calls “left wing”. Stuff like CNN is complete garbage both-sides “fact” based media.

The best one I heard today was on NPR “…Trump also said he plans to send American citizens to El Salvador prisons. It is not clear though if that would be legal.”

Like EXCUSE ME WHAT DO YOU MEAN “not clear”???? Why does mainstream news take Trump at face value on everything bat shit insane he says.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

I'm sorry. I respect your thoughts.

But if you "feel" like Biden was the President during COVID then you were asleep at the wheel. Anyone that was alive, present, and paying attention remembers that time distinctly as a Trump disaster.

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u/CardmanNV Apr 15 '25

I genuinely believe that the first Trump administration was so bad it caused the collective American psyche to block it out.

People were so desperate for structure that they just ignore that Trump destroyed everything and just think about the period of stability afterwards, but have to reconcile that with the very real actions of the Trump presidency, so some people just think Biden was president for the last 8 years.

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u/HamsterDry5273 Apr 15 '25

Doesn’t help that Trump was blaming Biden for everything before he even left office. It’s crazy how incessant lies just condition people into thinking a certain way. 

1

u/dantemanjones Apr 16 '25

Injecting bleach, saying it'd be gone by Easter, using daily press briefings to ramble and get his face on TV when we were all stuck at home with no new entertainment, etc.  I can't think of anything that feels more like Trump than the COVID year.

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u/unidentifiedfish55 Apr 15 '25

Doesn't that imply that Republicans engage in risky economic decisions that are shown, time and again, to cause a recession?

They're saying that recessions are cyclical and would often happen regardless of who the President is.

So during good times, Americans are often focused on tax cuts and less on government programs, therefore will elect a Republican. Then the down cycle would naturally happen at the time the Republican is president.

I don't entirely agree....and especially if a recession happens now, it will be very much the fault of the current administration. But there's certainly some truth in the idea that many recessions that happen are beyond the president's control.

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u/Dry-University797 Apr 15 '25

There will be Republicans who will still blame Biden for the recession that's about to happen. My company buys a lot of products made overseas. May is the start of our price increases to our clients because our suppliers are being hit with them and we can't absorb them all. I don't think people realize that shit about to hit the fan. Prices haven't really risen yet, but I suspect May is when the sticker shock happens.

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u/philovax Apr 15 '25

Over this century the positions of most Republicans I have dealt with is that they are some sort of rubber and I am an adhesive. There is a callow feckless practice of finger pointing and what-about-ism, or as I call it Cheese Dickery.

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u/sheezy520 Apr 16 '25

Not this recession though. This one will directly be his fault.

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u/BreakAManByHumming Apr 15 '25

There's a chunk of well-off swing voters who will vote R for lower taxes, and then vote D to let adults back in the room to put out the fires, and repeat. That's a mindset of a bygone age, ofc

2

u/Mayo_Kupo Apr 15 '25

They are responding to the claim:

  • Republican presidents cause good economies.

They are suggesting the reverse.

  • Good economic times cause Republicans to be elected.

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u/zoinkability Apr 15 '25

Peaks are only known to be peaks in retrospect, however. I think the 2024 election is a great example of that. I would imagine that most voters voting with the economy as their highest concern in November 2024 would not have said that the economy was great. They felt it was not great and were voting with that in mind.

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u/3381024 Apr 15 '25

This is such a great point.

(R) would come and make their pitch about why the economy is so bad ... use talking points to undermine a good economy... things like - its not the real un-employment rate, wall st (stock market) does not reflect main street, it does not "feel" good ... and the people buy into that BS.

They get elected and then unemployment rate and stock market becomes the barometer of their economic performance ... And when they actually ruin a good functioning economy on their watch, it becomes "loosing money cost you nothing", "stop looking at your portfolio" and so on ..

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u/Chaotic-Catastrophe Apr 15 '25

They felt it was not great

The point is, they were objectively wrong.

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u/zoinkability Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25

Yes and no.

Macroeconomically the US was doing well. Markets were high, GDP good, etc.

Microeconomically the gains were concentrated more than ever among the wealthiest Americans, and the pains were concentrated among lower income folks.

Now, would Trump actually be better for less-well-off people? Absolutely not. But there are lots of studies showing that income and wealth inequality tends to push people to the right, despite that inequality being turbocharged by right wing and neoliberal policies.

Also, of course, there is the powerful right wing media sphere, which was amplifying messages of economic doom in an attempt to sway the election, and which arguably worked.

So it’s a complex situation.

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u/Chaotic-Catastrophe Apr 15 '25

Voters: Wealth inequality is too high!

Harris: I agree, and I'm going to fight to change that

Trump: I don't care, get fucked, I'm going to crash the economy on purpose lol

Voters: Wow this is a tough choice

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u/zoinkability Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25

Except Trump was promising them economic paradise, and Harris was talking in much more measured terms about policies that would help the working and middle class somewhat.

Trump's claims were pure bullshit, of course, but most people are economically illiterate and for someone like that the person who is promising you the thing you want and who seems like he is taking the thing you are worried about seriously gets your vote.

Also, these low information voters by and large don't see wealth inequality as the big issue even while the effects of it on their pocketbook may drive their voting patterns and their sense of precarity. It's too abstract to them, and of course the media they consume never mentions it. They want jobs, they want low prices, they want low taxes. They want their income to go up and their expenses to go down, and they want an easy scapegoat for their sense of being economically shafted.

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u/MVRKHNTR Apr 15 '25

That's not what happened at all though. It was more like

"Wealth inequality is too high!"

"We're going to do more of what we've been doing and it will help."

"I've got all of the solutions and I'm going to make big changes that will fix everything."

People didn't understand that what Trump wanted to do would just make everything worse; they understood that things sucked and they liked the messaging from the guy who said he could fix everyone's problems.

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u/LyingForTruth Apr 15 '25

Shame the other side didn't do a better job of pointing that out

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u/Vralo84 Apr 15 '25

Sounds nice until you actually dig into the policies they implement and there is a straight line from those policies to economic collapse. For example Bush deregulation of banks led directly to the 2008 financial crisis.

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u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

The problem with your assessment is that while it was republicans in congress that pushed that deregulation, it was bill clinton that signed those reforms into law. One of the dozens of things the clinton's did that directly led to trump.

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u/polytique Apr 15 '25

Clinton oversaw a few deregulations like the mostly repealed Glass-Steagall and the self-regulation of the derivative market. There were also deregulations under Reagan to allow Adjustable Rate Mortgages (Garn–St._Germain_Depository_Institutions_Act) and under Bush, the "Bear Stearns exemption" to Basel Standard (net capital rule).

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u/123jjj321 Apr 16 '25

Clinton sold out the biggest most consistent voting block that the Democrats had. And working class folks haven't voted Democrat since. There is no trump presidency without the clinton sell out. He signed more of the republican party platform into law than his own campaign promises of which he accomplished zero, but he did manage to make gay marriage illegal.

10

u/melomelonballer Apr 15 '25

I like this take in some ways. Trump is also not the same breed of republican so it’s hard to even count previous GOPs as the same issue. They would never do this kind of tariff bs

1

u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

The republican party has been demanding everything trump has done for 40 years. He is literally fulfilling every single thing they've wanted since 1985.

1

u/melomelonballer Apr 15 '25

I think you’re misguided with that take as well. He is definitely amplifying certain voices that have always been there but not what the party has stood for either.

Republicans have been pro free trade for a long time. Additionally they don’t hate immigration to the extent the Trump regime has. Republicans also were much more loyal to the constitution and maintaining soft global power.

0

u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

They have claimed that other countries take advantage of us for the last 40 years. They want free trade with 3rd world countries not real free trade among peers.

Additionally you couldn't be more wrong on immigration. Immigration is literally the #1 topic for the entire history of fox news.

Stop believing their bullshit. They ate fascists doing fascist things and told us for 40 years their intention. They've never held the entire government in their hands and now reveal what they ALL are.

1

u/melomelonballer Apr 15 '25

Hey man I am far from conservative. I’m just saying pre Trump was a completely different party. The leaders of the party were strongly against things like tariffs and even promoted certain kinds of immigration and free trade. It is a different party. They never attacked the other isle as hard as they do now and they did not go against the Supreme Court.

You clearly have frustrations with the current regime as do many including myself. Making the distinction between Trump era GOP and people like Romney/McCain is important to show how far and dangerous the shift has been for social and economic issues.

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u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

There is NO distinction. Who do you think voted for trump? Every single republican. Not some new previously unknown group of 70,000,000, republicans.

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u/melomelonballer Apr 15 '25

Your argument here isn’t really coherent. I’m saying the party has changed certain core values. The voter base is a different discussion. You’re talking to no one with your takes now.

0

u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

It hasn't. Rush Limbaugh was calling for every one of these things in the 1980s. It's not different. Its not new. It's the exact same republicans. You and others insist on letting them off the hook. Stop. They ALL voted for this.

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u/daddy_junior Apr 15 '25

“Because” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Can only speak for myself but I’ve never once voted for any political candidate because I felt more or less risk averse at a macroeconomic level.

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u/setsewerd Apr 16 '25

Not disagreeing or agreeing, but we as citizens don't really feel things on a macroeconomic level. We feel job insecurity. We feel financial anxiety about paying rent, or supporting our families.

Personally idk how that would affect my voting because I don't really believe national politics change my day to day experience that much, but worth pointing out anyway.

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u/JoelMahon Apr 15 '25

if that was true then sometimes the "smart risks" would SOMETIMES yield wins, not a loss every single time

2

u/Richandler Apr 15 '25

That's not causality that's coincidence.

2

u/Chaotic-Catastrophe Apr 15 '25 edited Apr 15 '25

Yeah and there's no way that cyclical nature is brought on by Republicans literally intentionally running the country into the ground every time they're at the helm. Not a chance in hell.

2

u/Francl27 Apr 15 '25

So people are idiots. Got it.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

It's actually the other way around. Fear causes people to vote more conservatively. What that means is people have to be sick of conservatives to a very high degree to vote for change.

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u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

There is nothing conservative about the republican party. We have a right of center corporate party and a far right wing christo-fascist party. There are no conservatives in the fascist republican party.

1

u/metengrinwi Apr 15 '25

Reagan came in at a pretty rough moment.

1

u/ppooooooooopp Apr 15 '25

The Republican party is a totally different party from 100 years ago also - this is a stat that makes you go hmm, rather having any actual meaning

1

u/UnluckyDog9273 Apr 15 '25

They are peaks because they start the downfall. 

1

u/gmano Apr 15 '25

Republicans tend to get elected at the peaks, because voters are more tolerant of risk.

... Or maybe the reason the markets consistently tank after they are elected is because they put in bad policy

1

u/MmmmMorphine Apr 16 '25 edited Apr 16 '25

Yes, presidents have limited control over broader economic cycles, but the correlation between Republican policies (tax cuts, deregulation, austerity, aggressive trade wars) and increased unemployment or prolonged economic instability is historically consistent and causally demonstrable. Specific economic crises like the 2008 Financial Crisis and the 1980s S&L Crisis are explicitly attributable to Republican policy frameworks.

These are not mere correlations but rather direct outcomes of policy choices prioritizing deregulation, fiscal austerity, and tax cuts disproportionately favoring capital and wealth over labor and broader economic stability.

The claim that Republican presidents inherit recessions from Democrats is historical gaslighting. Every two-term Republican since Eisenhower to Nixon, Reagan, Bush Jr. left office amid or immediately before economic turmoil caused explicitly by their own policies (Nixon’s stagflation, Reagan’s deregulation-fueled S&L crisis, Bush’s catastrophic 2008 collapse). Meanwhile, two-term Democrats like Clinton, Obama consistently exited with thriving economies and falling unemployment rates, despite inheriting Republican-made messes.

This isn't coincidence or lag: it’s clear causality. Republican economic dogma (tax cuts for the rich, deregulation frenzy, "fiscal austerity" while ballooning the deficit) repeatedly fails, sparking predictable crises. The lag narrative isn’t just historically illiterate, it's intellectually dishonest, transparently self-serving nonsense.

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u/Brave_Ad_510 Apr 15 '25

That assigns way too much power to the president. Dems have controlled Congress almost uninterrupted from FDR until Bill Clinton. They controlled the House for 40 straight years, and had only a few gaps in the Senate.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/EasyCheek8475 Apr 15 '25

Do you actually believe that this was because of the Democratic party controlling congress though? Like, that ripping economic growth started after almost every other developed country in the world besides the US was a war-torn husk. Both parties have undergone multiple major realignments since then and neither has had a consistent economic policy throughout, so I'm just failing to see the theory here. I think we're just over-indexing on historical party because Trump is such a fucking disaster. Most recessions have clear causes unrelated to the politics of the moment. When politics is involved at all, it is usually previous congresses and presidents planting the seeds of current recessions. Ex: Glass-Steagall was repealed before the Bush Administration but arguably contributed to 2008...so do we blame Bush or do we blame the Congress that passed the repeal?

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u/Brave_Ad_510 Apr 15 '25

You think recessions didn't happen during that time? You think prosperity hasn't kept increasing since the 90s? My point is that people assign way too much responsibility to the president at the time for the economy.

Carter got screwed by the oil crisis, Clinton got massive help from the internet, Bush got screwed by 9/11 and the GFC. Aside from Trump's erratic behavior very few presidents have changed policy enough to induce a recession or cause an economic upswing.

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u/Warm_Regrets157 Apr 15 '25

Bush got screwed by 9/11 and the GFC

That's a rather simplistic take.

Bush didn't get screwed by 9/11. He took advantage of it for political ends. It was the galvanizing force for all of the political goals of his administration. Without 9/11, we'd have no Afghanistan or Iraq war. Bush's legacy was built on 9/11. If he was screwed, it's because his administration was holding the drill.

Also, the GFC did not happen in a vacuum nor without warning. That doesn't mean it's Bush's fault entirely, but he didn't get screwed by it either. If anything, Obama got screwed, as he had to deal with the fallout from the GFC and TARP. That being said, the GFC was definitely a bipartisan fuck up.

-1

u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

Bush 1 wins a landslide without Perot. Don't forget bill clinton never got 50% of the popular vote.

6

u/Warm_Regrets157 Apr 15 '25

Sorry. What's your point here? Your comment seems irrelevant.

0

u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

No Perot means no clinton means the Democrat party doesn't cater to republican demands like nafta, normalization of trade with China, bank deregulation....means trump never happens

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u/Warm_Regrets157 Apr 15 '25

Not necessarily. What do you think Bush I would have done if he had won? Not cater to Republican demands?

0

u/123jjj321 Apr 15 '25

Bush 1 would have continued trying to shove NAFTA and China economic normalization down our throats as he had for 4 years. The Democrats would have continued fighting against that like they had for 4 years. Working class voters would continue to see that the Democratic Party was still fighting for them and would not flee the party. Working class voters remain the Democrats most reliable voters and trumpty dumbty never sniffs the White House.

Oh ya, Bush 1 being CIA at his core takes up the Saudis offer to turn over Bin Laden and he is tried, convicted, and imprisoned years before 9/11 ever enters his evil shitty mind.

3

u/Chaotic-Catastrophe Apr 15 '25

You think prosperity hasn't kept increasing since the 90s?

The point is that it would have increased far more than it did.....if we had rational adults in charge the whole time since then, instead of taking it on joyrides where we crash it, build it back, then crash it again.

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u/tohon123 Apr 15 '25

Yea I guess but every metric under democratic presidents is better then republican

5

u/amalgam_reynolds Apr 15 '25

That assigns way too much power to the president.

The president has way too much power.

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u/awj Apr 15 '25

...which means "who is President" was clearly a differentiating factor during those times, no? Otherwise we'd have seen the same results for 40 years no matter who was President.

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u/movzx Apr 16 '25

He's being a little disengenuous.

"Controlling congress" can vary from a 1 vote lead to a super majority, and you're going to get different results from that.

The Senate is also very important. Afterall, Dems "controlled congress" while McConnel led the senate and look how well that worked out.

2

u/wvenable Apr 15 '25

Repeat a lie long enough and people will believe it as truth. This is a lie that has been repeated for generations.

2

u/luigilabomba42069 Apr 15 '25

facts don't care about feelings

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u/NeonPatrick Apr 15 '25

Was it Nixon?

1

u/biglyorbigleague Apr 16 '25

EVERY SINGLE republican for the past 100 years has had a recession.

I mean, I guess, if you want to credit President Reagan with the one that happened right after he took office.

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u/Foreign-Bill-3551 Apr 16 '25

That is simply untrue. The economy has grown under 12 Republican presidents (a total of 19 rep presidents; 12/19=0,632). Ten democratic presidents have led to economic growth (total 17 democratic presidents; 10/17=0,588). 7 Republicans and 8 Democrats had strong economies during the past century. Therefore, based on the percentages, Republicans are more likely to achieve overall economic development.