One hundred days in, Donald Trump faces a problem: he can rage, but he can't govern | Jonathan Freedland

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : The latest Ipsos survey for the Washington Post/ABC News has Trump at just 39%.
58% : As for Ukraine, Trump got to brag of a breakthrough this week, with an agreement that gives the US a stake in Ukraine's mineral wealth.
53% : Start with the numbers that matter most to Trump himself.
53% : Back then, 42% of Americans approved of the way Trump was doing his job.
51% : This, remember, is meant to be the honeymoon period, yet Trump is 10 points behind where Joe Biden stood at this point, 30 points behind Barack Obama and 44 points behind Ronald Reagan.
50% : This is the nature of nationalist populism, whether it wears a red cap in Michigan or a turquoise rosette in Runcorn.
49% : The single biggest achievement of those 100 days has been to serve as a warning of the perils of nationalist populism, which is effective in winning votes but disastrous when translated into reality.
47% : Because the economic data is almost as troubling for Trump as his poll numbers.
46% : But the whiff of desperation is strong as Trump begins to see why the one idea he actually believes in and has believed in for decades - tariffs - is an object of near-universal contempt among economists.
42% : Perhaps most significant is that Trump is weak even in those areas where he's meant to be strong.
38% : On the latter, just 37% back Trump, a depth he never plumbed during his first term, even as the economy seized up under Covid.
37% : Bit late in his career for Trump to don the saffron robes and preach a Zen flight from consumerist materialism.
36% : So it's fair to say the 100 days have not gone as Trump would have wished.
35% : " Trump knows that the warnings from retail giants Walmart and Target, of empty shelves as supplies from heavily tariffed China dry up, have cut through.
35% : Asked about potential shortages of toys at Christmas, Trump said, "Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
35% : By now, you'll recall, Trump was meant to have ended the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, indeed he promised to do that by 21 January.
27% : Trump wasted no time in blaming the shrinkage on Biden, who was in charge for just 20 days of the first three months of 2025, an argument only slightly weakened by the fact that the last quarter with Biden in charge saw growth of 2.4%.
24% : " The promise was that this second Trump term would be different, that the chaos and churn of Trump 1.0 would be gone.
18% : And note how the reliably rightwing editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is now a fierce critic, slamming Trump as a "bully" and denouncing tariffs as "the biggest economic policy mistake in decades".

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