Minnesota Poll: Most disapprove of tariffs, Trump’s handling of the economy

President Donald Trump won the White House a second time with promises to lower prices starting on “day one” and impose tariffs he said would reshore American manufacturing and create thousands of jobs.

But less than a third of Minnesotans say the economy has improved since Trump took office in January.

The latest Star Tribune/Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication Minnesota Poll showed 47% of respondents feel the economy has gotten worse since Trump took office, while 30% say it has gotten better and a smaller share — 22% — say it is unchanged.

Voters in Hennepin and Ramsey counties give Trump the lowest marks for his handling of the economy, but fewer than half of voters in greater Minnesota or other metro counties say the economy has improved under Trump.

(Scroll to the end of this article for full results for each question. More information about the poll methodology, a demographic breakdown of the sample and a map of the poll regions can be found at startribune.com/methodology.)

Among voters who describe themselves as independents, a third said economic conditions had improved. A similar share said conditions were unchanged, while 37% said they were worse.

Almost two-thirds of voters who identified as Republican or lean Republican said the economy had improved under Trump, while 89% of Democrats said it had gotten worse.

“It’s getting worse and worse,” said Lisa Robinson, 61, who is unable to work due to a disability and worries about cuts to government programs she relies on, including Medicaid, SNAP and Social Security. The Minneapolis Democrat is also unsure her 70-year-old partner will be able to retire from his maintenance job.

“The problem is that Trump, every time he opens his mouth, the stocks drop, and he can’t make up his mind about the tariffs,” Robinson said.

Trump’s on-again, off-again trade war reached a fever pitch in early April, when he announced double-digit taxes on imports from across the globe. The administration placed a 90-day pause on most of the new tariffs a week later, with an exemption for Chinese goods, which faced total duties of 145% — a number that has since been scaled back.

Minnesota voters are on the whole not optimistic about the potential impact of Trump’s tariffs, with 47% saying they feel their personal financial situation will be worse in the long run. Twenty-eight percent said they expect to be better off and 24% said they expect their situation to stay about the same.

Robert Arends, 43, of Marshall, said he works three jobs to support his children, ages 15, 13 and 11. He said he believes the economy has improved under Trump, and that tariffs will equalize trade between the U.S. and its trading partners.

“I believe, from what I know, that it probably is something that was necessary,” Arends said of tariffs. “I do hope and I do pray that my economic and my overall living is going to be better.”

The poll’s findings are based on interviews with 800 Minnesota registered voters conducted from June 16 to 18. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Rachel Thompson, 48, of North St. Paul, said she thinks there are misconceptions about how tariffs work and what their impact will be on American consumers.

“The misconception is that we’re being some tough guy and we’re putting taxes on these countries that we feel we don’t like or who have wronged us in some kind of misperceived way, but it is a tax on us. It’s going to cost us more money in the long run,” Thompson said. “I think there are some things that we can do to improve our economy, to improve our trade with other countries, but we need to come at it with a scalpel and not a chainsaw.”

Politics play a big role in how Americans view the economy. Data from the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, considered the gold standard for measuring consumer sentiment, shows respondents whose preferred party is in the White House tend to view the economy more positively and be more optimistic about where it’s headed.

“We’ve been seeing these partisan differences in sentiment since at least the Reagan administration,” said Joanne Hsu, director of the Surveys of Consumers. “So it’s not new, though the partisan gap has widened.”

The Democratic party struggled under former President Joe Biden to make the case that a good-on-paper economy was good for voters’ pocketbooks. Decades-high inflation coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, which economists attribute in part to supply chain issues and government stimulus spending, has lingered in the form of higher prices.

“The No. 1 thing that’s on people’s minds right now, and has been for the last three years, has been inflation, cost of living, purchasing power,” Hsu said. “The fact that their incomes and their living standards are being eroded by high prices makes people feel like they can’t get ahead.”

Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy Inc. interviewed 800 Minnesota registered voters between June 16 and June 18, 2025. Findings from questions about the economy and tariffs are below. Totals may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Details about how the poll was conducted, the demographics of the 800 respondents and a map of the Minnesota regions used in this poll can be found at startribune.com/methodology.