Donald Trump won two presidential elections by promising to put American workers first. Ahead of the 2026 midterms, we @InnovateEconomy have asked American workers themselves how they judge the president’s economic stewardship and what they think about the key economic issues of our time. The findings should deeply worry Republicans. Let's start with tariffs, the president's signature economic policy: While in 2025 a sizable share of workers gave the president the benefit of the doubt, a year and a half on from Liberation Day, workers have soured on tariffs mightily. Perhaps the survey's single most important finding is the collapse of support for tariffs among blue-collar workers specifically. While in 2025 blue-collar workers expressed net support for the policy (49 percent to 46 percent), these ostensible tariff beneficiaries now oppose tariffs 58 percent to 36 percent.

I've been noodling on my Great Decompression thesis for a year, flipping from the 80th percentile to the 90th as my focal point, flopping from worker earnings to family earnings, and so on and so forth. Today the idea gets clarity, thanks to the masterful data work and cogent distillation of @CardiffGarcia and @BenGlasner. Cardiff and Ben present a quantitative mosaic that, I genuinely believe, explains the American politics of the past decade and a half. Indexed to December of the recession-riddled 1982, the median wage has climbed in real terms, but it has been substantially outpaced by the real-wage growth at the 90th percentile. While when discussing the Great Decompression I've looked almost exclusively at the upper half of the wage distribution, Cardiff and Ben unveil another reason why median earners might be discontented: Not only are median earners being left in the dust by those at the top, they're also being caught up to by those at the bottom. Paradoxical as this is, the median wage has lagged not only the 90th percentile, but also the 25 and the 10th. (And adding insult to injury, the 75th, too.) Check out Cardiff and Ben's six interwoven stories on real wage growth @InnovateEconomy.