Nine months after Donald Trump took office, promising to cut prices on “day one”, a clear majority of Americans say their monthly spending has increased by between $100 and $749, according to an exclusive new poll conducted for the Guardian.
The president continued to insist that there was “virtually no inflation.” “Prices are falling in the United States,” Trump wrote on social media in late August.
Yet Americans continue to report soaring inflation and are increasingly pessimistic about the economy, according to a new Harris poll.
When asked to estimate how much their regular monthly expenses had increased compared to last year, 74% of respondents said they saw an increase of at least $100, according to the survey.
The increases were reported across the political spectrum, with both Democrats and Republicans, as well as independents, reporting price increases.
Trump’s reelection victory came as voters have soured on Joe Biden’s economic policies and the legacy of Covid-era inflation. “On day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again,” Trump said at an August 2024 rally.
The inflation rate fell from an annual rate of 3% in January, when Trump took office, to 2.9% per year in August (latest figures published). It has fallen significantly from its peak of more than 9% in 2022, but remains uncomfortably above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
The poll results echo those of the Yale Budget Lab, whose economists calculated that households will see an average increase of $2,300 in costs per year due to Trump’s tariffs, or an average of $191 per month. This research calculates overall price level increases and the effect these increases will have on average household incomes.
Many believe the 2024 presidential election was a referendum on Biden’s economy. Inflation soared in the years following the pandemic, while wages struggled to keep up, making many Americans feel like their paychecks were losing power. While Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris fought to present a new, cost-focused economic vision, for many voters it was too late.
But with the midterm elections just over a year away, Trump’s economy doesn’t look much brighter. A slight majority (54%) of Americans said they thought the economy was in recession, five percentage points higher than Harris’s Guardian poll. last September. The majority of Americans (53%) also think the economic situation is getting worse, compared to 48% who said the same thing last year.
Inflation was considered the biggest risk to the U.S. economy when respondents were asked to choose one issue from a list of threats, including immigration, U.S. democracy and tariffs. Inflation was the top risk for Republicans (31%) and independents (33%), and the second risk for Democrats (29%), behind tariffs.
But the parties differ on where they see the cracks. Immigration is the second biggest risk for Republicans, with 20% saying it is the biggest risk to the economy, compared to just 8% of Democrats and independents. At the same time, tariffs posed a significant risk for many Democrats (31%) and independents (24%).
Asked what’s driving the price increase, Republicans are much more likely (45%) to say it’s standard annual changes due to inflation, compared to 22% of Democrats and 27% of independents. Meanwhile, 55% of Democrats and 55% of independents said they believed the price increases were driven by current economic policies set by the government. About the same percentage of people across the political spectrum, just over 20 percent, said the changes were because companies were charging customers too much to increase profits.
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While Republicans seem much less likely than Democrats to blame tariffs, and thus the Trump administration, for price increases, independents seem just as willing as Democrats to point the finger at tariffs as a problem.
This is a considerable change from last year. Last September, when Biden was still president, independents were more aligned with Republicans on pessimism around the economy. That pessimism likely lent itself to votes for Trump: Even though independents were split between Trump and Biden in 2024, the group favored Biden by 9% in the 2020 election, according to the Pew Research Center.
But if dissatisfaction with the economy was a boon for Republicans in the last election, it may not translate into an easy path to the midterms for Democrats.
The poll showed that independents’ pessimism about the economy, while shared by Democrats, does not necessarily translate into support for the party.
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Among all respondents, optimism toward the Democratic Party (25%) has declined since last September (37%), while pessimism (39%) has increased.
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Pessimism is slightly higher for Republicans (41%) compared to last year, while optimism for the Republican Party has remained the same since last year, at just over 30%.
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The stimuli for Republican optimism come from within the party: among Republicans, 60% say they are optimistic for their party, compared to 42% of Democrats who say the same thing about their own party.
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Independents’ pessimism is higher for the Republican Party this year (43%) compared to last year (33%), although it is now about the same as that of people who are also pessimistic about the Democratic Party (41%).
But despite the decline in support for Democrats, economic policies stemming from Democratic policies, including the federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries, the expansion of the child tax credit, and the increase in long-term capital gains tax rates for millionaires, are still popular among voters and are far more popular than the policies that Trump pursued and implemented. Support for Democratic policies mirrors results seen last September.
The ban on price gouging, proposed by Harris’ campaign, remains the most popular policy, with 45% of Americans saying it would strengthen the economy. Trump’s top policy, with 43 percent support, was eliminating taxes on Social Security — a measure his administration has yet to take action on.
Although central to Trump’s economic agenda, mass expulsions of migrants (24%), tax cuts (22%) and tariffs on foreign goods (22%) are among the least popular policies.
This survey was conducted online within the US by the Harris poll from September 11 to 13 2025, among a nationally representative sample of 2,093 US adults.
