Seven in 10 Americans say Donald Trump’s tariffs have led to them paying higher prices, according to an exclusive new poll for the Guardian.
The Harris Poll survey presents Republicans with a major problem in the battle for the upcoming midterm elections. The majority of all voters (72%) believe Trump’s tariffs have had a negative rather than a positive impact and 67% said tariffs aren’t the right solution for improving the economy.
Yet Trump has made clear he wants to press ahead with more tariffs even after a supreme court ruling curbed many of the levies he introduced last year.
Trump’s signature economic policy gets poor marks across the political spectrum:
64% of Republicans agreed that Trump’s tariffs had led to higher prices compared with 77% of Democrats and 67% of independents who believed the same.
60% of Republicans also said that tariffs had had more of a negative impact on consumers than a positive one, compared with 81% of Democrats and 75% of independents.
Poll chart on prices
Americans are experiencing the most sticker shock at the grocery store, with 57% saying that tariffs have negatively affected grocery prices. This is in line with recent economic data that showed grocery prices went up 3.1% from February 2025 to February 2026 – higher than the overall pace of inflation. Beef and coffee, two food industries that have been highly affected by tariffs, have seen huge increases since last year, going up 14% and 18%, respectively.
The survey was conducted by Harris Poll at the end of February, before the US and Israel started a war with Iran, increasing oil prices.
While the majority of voters disapprove of Trump’s tariffs, a clear partisan divide remains. A vast majority of Democrats (81%) and independents (68%) agreed that tariffs aren’t the right solution for the economy, compared with 53% of Republicans who said the same.
Republicans are also more optimistic about the economy overall. Nearly half (49%) of Republican respondents said they believed the economy is getting better, while just 18% of Democrats and independents said the same.
Poll chart of economic sentiment
Conservatives are also more patient about Trump’s tariffs: 80% said they were open to seeing whether tariffs could positively affect the economy in 2026, compared with 46% of Democrats and 53% of independents.
A clear majority of Republicans (69%) said that tariffs had brought back manufacturing jobs. Meanwhile, 46% of Democrats and 38% of independents believed that manufacturing jobs won’t ever come back, compared with just 13% of Republicans who said the same.
Poll chart on manufacturing jobs
This split may pose a challenge for Republicans in the midterm elections, as they try to convince independent swing voters that their party has been attuned to the rising costs of living, despite the clear negative sentiment around tariffs.
When Trump won his re-election in 2024, a small but critical mass of independent-leaning voters showed up for him at the voting booth. Trump had spent much of his campaign bashing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for their record on inflation and promised to turn the economy around.
At the same time, Trump was always firm that tariffs were the answer to the US’s problem, calling it the “most beautiful” word in the dictionary.
Even though inflation and unemployment were hitting their lowest level last spring, Trump enthusiastically announced a historic slate of tariffs, slapping levies on virtually every import that came into the country. Many of these tariffs have been rolled back or struck down by a recent supreme court ruling, but Trump has vowed to keep tariffs in place.
“It was the tariff that made America strong and powerful in generations past and it is tariffs that are making our country stronger, safer and richer than ever before,” Trump wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published in January.
Since February, Trump has announced a new 15% global baseline tariff that he plans to put in place. Because of the court’s ruling, the tariffs can only last for a maximum of 150 days. On Wednesday, the White House also announced it had opened trade investigations into foreign countries, a process that could lead to even more new tariffs.
This survey was conducted online within the US by the Harris Poll from 26-28 February 2026, among a nationally representative sample of 2,138 US adults.
