One of the main reasons why President Trump won a second term in last year’s election was the perception that the Biden administration beat inflation – and that Trump was better equipped to lower prices.
But a new Yahoo/YouGov poll shows that by a two-to-one margin, Americans believe the president has actually done more to raise prices (49%) than lower them (24%) since he returned to office in January.
At a time when 72% of Americans describe the economy as fair or poor and 79% say they are paying more money than they were a few years ago for the same goods and services, the sense that Trump is making things worse rather than better helps explain why most Americans (56%) still do not approve of how he is handling his job as president — and why they do not approve of his approach.
The new poll of 1,684 US adults was conducted from November 21 to November 24 — just weeks after Democrats running on an “affordability” message swept all the 2025 marquee races, from New York to New Jersey to Virginia. At first, Trump responded to his party’s loss by insisting that America has “the greatest economy we’ve ever had” and dismissed voter concerns about an affordability crisis as “a con job by the Democrats.”
“I don’t want to hear about affordability,” the president said.
Soon, however, Trump changed, and floated several policies — $2,000 rebate checks, 50-year mortgages, direct payments for health care — designed to relieve pressure on household budgets. His administration has even announced that it will remove some of its tariffs on foreign products, including beef, tomatoes, bananas and coffee.
How Trump compares to Biden on inflation
Yet the new Yahoo/YouGov poll suggests the president still has a lot of work to do on the issue. To be sure, inflation has declined from its peak of 9% in the COVID era under former President Joe Biden; by the time Trump took office in January, it was hovering around 3%. The problem is that — even though Trump claimed that “we have no inflation” — today it is still at 3%, with the prices of products, coffee, clothes, houses and electricity all rising.
Meanwhile, Trump has imposed sweeping new import levies that have pushed America’s overall average tariff rate to 18% — the highest since 1934 — while raising costs for US households by $1,600 to $2,600 a year, according to independent estimates.
As a result, 60% of Americans now say inflation is getting worse — matching the highest number recorded in nine Yahoo/YouGov polls conducted over the last two years of the Biden presidency. Only 17% say inflation is improving.
And when those who think inflation is getting worse are asked which factor is “more responsible” for that — “events the president can’t control” or “policies the president can control” — seven out of 10 of them (the equivalent of 42% of Americans overall) say the latter. By comparison, only 33% of Americans said the same in November 2022, when Biden was president.
Meanwhile, the share of independents who say inflation is getting worse and attribute that development to policies a president can control has risen even more — from 33%
in October 2022 and 47% now.
Ultimately, inflation itself may not be higher today than it was then. But more people think Trump is making it worse. Three years ago, 52% of Americans said Biden was not “doing enough” to address the issue; 61% now say the same about Trump. Three years ago, 35% of Americans said that Biden “deserves most of the blame for current inflation”; 38% now say the same about Trump.
Weighing Trump’s economic policy
Trump’s tariffs are still generally unpopular. By a two-to-one margin, most Americans continue to say that the new import taxes are having more of a negative (52%) than a positive (26%) effect on the US economy in the short term. And two-thirds (66%) mostly agree with the statement that the recent tariffs “have increased the amount I pay for goods and services,” far more than the number who agree with the president’s arguments in favor of their implementation: that they “raised trillions of dollars in revenue for the United States government” (39%); to “make other countries treat the United States more fairly” (40%); and that they “forced companies to do things in America rather than elsewhere (47%).
Not surprisingly, then, nearly all Americans with an opinion (77% of Americans overall) approve of the Trump administration’s recent decision to lift some of its tariffs on beef and other goods. Only 7% do not approve; the rest (16%) are not sure. And only 9% of Americans want to see “all” of the recent tariffs “continue,” while more than three-quarters would prefer to see “all” (38%) or “some” (38%) of them removed.
As for Trump’s recent affordability proposals, only the idea to “use revenue raised from recent tariffs to send $2,000 in rebate checks” garners majority support (58%). Republicans are the most supportive (68%), but most Democrats (55%) and independents (52%) also favor controls.
In contrast, the new Yahoo/YouGov survey finds little enthusiasm for 50-year mortgages that “lower monthly payments by spreading them out over two additional decades, but also roughly double the amount of interest the borrower pays over the course of the loan.” After reading that description, only 19% of Americans say they favor the idea; 56% say they oppose it. And only 8% say they would ever choose to get a 50-year mortgage themselves.
Trump’s proposal to avoid a coming increase in health insurance premiums — to put the money “into an account for people where people buy their own health insurance” — doesn’t fare much better. After reading that the subsidies that “help make health care coverage more affordable for the roughly 20 million Americans who buy insurance through the Obamacare (ACA) marketplace” will “expire at the end of the year” — a development that would “increase premiums by 114%, on average” — more than twice as many Americans (55%) say Congress should extend the subsidies (23%) than not.
Similarly, when offered a choice, far more Americans (49%) would prefer to “extend existing subsidies to keep premiums from rising, even if it means some people have to continue buying insurance through the ACA marketplaces,” rather than “give people a fixed sum of money to buy health insurance, even if it means many people end up with less comprehensive coverage and higher deductibles (22%).”
Even support for $2,000 fee rebate checks comes with a caveat. When asked to consider other uses for fee receipts, only 41% of Americans choose checks; combined, a greater number choose either “to pay the national debt” (27%) or “fund government programs” (18%). And when told how much tariffs are costing every US household — again, “$1,600 to $2,600 a year, according to independent estimates” — Americans are split on the best way to “put some of that money back in people’s pockets,” with 43% favoring rebate controls and 42% preferring only “remove tariffs to lower prices.”
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The Yahoo poll was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,684 US adults interviewed online from November 21 to November 24, 2025. The sample was weighted by gender, age, race, education, 2024 election turnout and presidential vote, party identification and current registration status of voters. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted with the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democrat, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all US adults. The margin of error is approximately 3%.