One-third of Americans who voted for President-elect Donald Trump said they chose him because of his business acumen or economic vision, a new poll reveals.
Thirty-three percent of Trump voters said, in their own words, they voted for him because of the “economy” or because “he is a good businessman,” a Washington Post-Schar School poll released Friday reveals.
“He is a good businessman and doesn’t let anyone take advantage of him,” one Trump voter from Wisconsin told pollsters.
“The economy was at a better place when he was in office,” another Trump supporter from Arizona said.
But Trump’s record as a businessman isn’t exactly pristine.
Earlier this year, a unanimous jury found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with payments to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels, whose story about having sex with the now-president-elect threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign.
New York Justice Juan Merchan refused to throw out the conviction on Monday after a request from Trump’s lawyer, prompting the president-elect to lash out on Truth Social.
“Merchan, who is a radical partisan, wrote an opinion that is knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution, and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it,” Trump wrote.
Trump is also barred from serving as an officer or director of any corporation in New York for the next three years after Judge Arthur Engoron ruled the Trump Organization violated the state’s fraud laws. Trump and his company owe more than $400 million in fines as a result. His two sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are under the same ban for two years.
During Trump’s first term, his tax cuts did not deliver the growth he promised, his budget deficits rose and his tariffs failed to increase factory jobs in the U.S., the Associated Press reported.
As he readies a return to the White House, Trump has said that Canada and Mexico could see a 25 percent tariff added to all imported goods while China could face an additional 10 percent during his second term. He claims this is part of an effort to curtail “crime and drugs” coming into the country and slow the number of illegal border crossings.
Trump also said he told European Union officials they must purchase more oil and gas from the U.S. or he will hit them with tariffs.
Several economists say these proposed policies could trigger disaster for consumers. Daan Struyven, head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs, said last month the tariffs “could in theory lead to some pretty significant consequences for three groups of people: US consumers, US refiners, and Canadian producers.”
George Washington University economics professor Tara Sinclair previously told The Independent she has similar concerns.
“Tariffs would likely be a higher tax on consumers – U.S. consumers,” Sinclair said. “This idea that those tariffs would somehow be magically paid by the foreign companies and wouldn’t be passed through American consumers does not seem to stand out empirically in the data.”
Meanwhile, Trump and his team have defended the tariff proposals.
““In his first term, President Trump instituted tariffs against China that created jobs, spurred investment, and resulted in no inflation,” spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a previous statemtn to The Independent. “President Trump will work quickly to fix and restore an economy that puts American workers by re-shoring American jobs, lowering inflation, raising real wages, lowering taxes, cutting regulations, and unshackling American energy.”
The Washington Post-Schar School poll also revealed that 17 percent of Trump voters chose him because he was the “best candidate” or because they thought he had “better policies.”
Another 16 percent said they chose Trump because they opposed his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and/or the Democratic party.
Just 15 percent say they voted based on immigration or his border control policies, which Trump claimed on the campaign trail were top-priority issues for voters.
