Trump’s lack of focus on economy is spooking Republicans as 2026 election looms

It’s a tone deafness that has led to flagging polling. Sixty percent of respondents in CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey, released Thursday for the first quarter of 2026 disapproved of his handling of the economy. The shift reminds some political advisors of missteps made by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election cycle.

Saying inflation is “transitory,” as Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen did in June 2021, sounds a lot like Trump officials proclaiming gas prices will drop in “a few more weeks,” as they have amid the Iran war, said Adam Bozzi, a Democratic strategist and former congressional aide.

Republicans hope to hold onto narrow majorities in the House and Senate, but some worry the party could be squandering a long-held GOP advantage on the economy and repeating mistakes Democrats made a cycle earlier.

“He lost his franchise of the economy, and the Democrats realized that is his vulnerability,” Murphy said.

Democratic campaigns flip the economy script

White House spokesperson Kush Desai batted down the idea that Trump and Republicans have lost ground on the economy.

“President Trump can walk and chew gum at the same time,” he said. “Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump has signed multiple executive orders on housing affordability, TrumpRx has added new tranches of discounted drugs, and tens of millions of Americans received historic tax refund checks thanks to the President’s Working Families Tax Cuts.” The Working Families Tax Cut Act is the 2025 GOP tax and spending package more commonly known at the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

But Democrats see an opening and are seizing the moment to flip the script and use economic messaging to their advantage in this year’s elections as Trump’s attention gets diverted by election conspiracies, personal vendettas and foreign policy. 

Casey Burgat, legislative affairs program director at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, said he is seeing that flip as Democrats take more ownership of the economy.

“I think maybe [Democrats’] post-mortem told them they were out of touch and that they couldn’t explain away how people were feeling at their kitchen tables,” Burgat said. “But now the shoe is on the other foot in that Trump owns this now. And what used to be his best attack on the [Biden] administration, is now his biggest vulnerability.”

Despite pressure, the Democratic National Committee has not released its official autopsy for the 2024 election, in which Republicans cruised to the White House and control of both chambers of Congress. But there is some consensus on what went wrong.

“Hindsight is always 2020, but I think we’ve got a bevy of evidence that suggests the economy and cost of living was top of mind for most voters, especially most double haters of both candidates,” said Tré Easton, vice president for public policy at the Searchlight Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank, and a former aide to Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa.

Economy out of focus

To Trump critics like Murphy, as Americans’ economic angst grows — and Trump’s approval on the issue dips to new lows — the president has seemed unable to sustain focus on cost-of-living issues.

“The president, who is supposed to be this ardent businessman, is prioritizing things elsewhere. I think that’s going to be a problem for Republicans during midterms for sure,” said Brittany Martinez, executive director at Principles First — an organization that positions itself as an alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference — and a former aide to Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

At an impromptu press conference meant to tout Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy that was implemented as part of the 2025 tax and spending bill, a Doordash deliverywoman had to keep the president on task when he veered into talking about transgender men in women’s sports.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/23/trump-economy-2026-election-republicans-democrats.html