Several factors were involved:

• The continuing high cost of living, especially groceries
• The Tariff wars increased the cost of automobiles and home appliances assembled from foreign-made parts
• Focus on niche issues: windmills, personal grievances against opponents, and foreign affairs such as Greenland and Venezuela
• Health care costs
• Radical enforcement of immigration tactics, including harassment of protests, resulting in two deaths of U.S citizens recently
• Resistance from some MAGA supporters because of his statements about guns

A combination of all these issues resulted in a very low approval rating in the polls of only 38% across the board in most polls. His rating caused him to take a conciliatory tone with negotiations on approving the budget. He agreed to pull the budget for the Department of Homeland Security as long as the Democrats would approve all the other budgets.

As a consequence, the Senate approved those budgets and sent them to the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, the House was in recess for a week and will not come back until sometime today. These negotiations may or may not pass the House. Some agencies might have shut down for the weekend.

The President has had a rocky first year during his second term in office, largely due to wide swings in positions. Such as the dismissal of 300,000 Federal employees, many of whom were re-instated after court cases. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was a complete flop when Elon Musk left. The business community was most upset about the tariff wars that kept changing so that it was impossible for them to set prices long-term.

Even though the President has a low rating among the U.S. public, he is rated even lower by European politicians, who openly ridicule him. They particularly have been concerned about how his antics about Greenland may impact NATO. Some are negotiating with India about trade issues, as is Canada. The Canadian Prime Minister speaks of an open breach with the U.S because of the President’s negative comments about Canada.

How does this concern the President? He just keeps swinging back and forth on what he calls negotiation tactics. There is little likelihood that he will calm down his public pronouncements. He just loves to jab the media with outrageous statements and then reverse his course so they have to scramble to figure out what he really said.

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