Trump's economic promises to Black voters fall short after a modest
shift in support for him in 2024
[September 22, 2025] By
JOSH BOAK
WASHINGTON (AP) — At one of his final rallies before the 2024 election,
then-candidate Donald Trump warned that Black Americans were losing
their jobs in droves and that things would get even worse if he did not
return to the White House.
“You should demand that they give you the numbers of how many Black
people are going to lose their job,” Trump said. “The African American
population, they’re getting fired at numbers that we have never seen
before."
But with Trump back in office since January, an already fragile
financial situation for Black Americans has worsened. Upset by inflation
and affordability issues, Black voters had shifted modestly toward the
Republican last year on the promise that he could boost the economy by
stopping border crossings and challenging foreign factories with
tariffs. Yet a recent spate of economic data instead shows a widening
racial wealth gap.
Black unemployment has climbed from 6.2% to 7.5% so far in 2025, the
highest level since October 2021. Black homeownership has fallen to the
lowest level since 2021, according to an analysis by the real estate
brokerage Redfin. Earlier this month, the Census Bureau said the median
Black household income fell 3.3% last year to $56,020, which is roughly
$36,000 less than what a white household earns and evidence of a bad
situation becoming worse.
That creates a major political risk for the president as well as an
economic danger for the nation because job losses for Black Americans
have historically foreshadowed a wider set of layoffs across other
groups.
“Black Americans are often the canary in the coal mine,” said Angela
Hanks, a former official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and
the Labor Department who is now at The Century Foundation, a liberal
think tank.
The Trump White House stressed that some of these downward trends, such
as a relative decline in Black wealth, began under Democratic President
Joe Biden. It emphasized that the “diversity, equity and inclusion”
policies pushed by Democrats failed to deliver economic gains.
“Despite his lunatic obsession with DEI, Joe Biden’s disastrous economic
agenda reduced the Black share of household wealth by nearly 25%," said
White House spokesman Kush Desai. “His inflationary policies caused
interest rate hikes that froze Americans out of homeownership, and his
open borders policies flooded the country with tens of millions of
illegals who drove down wages.”
Some Black voters see Trump's policies as doing more to hurt than
help
Some Black voters who stayed on the sidelines in 2024 feel they need to
be more engaged politically.
Josh Garrett, a 30-year-old salesperson in Florida, said he could not
find a candidate last year with whom he agreed. He is frustrated by
Trump's layoffs of federal workers and sees a government more geared
toward billionaires than the middle class.
“I don’t understand how you could be for the American people and have
Americans lose their jobs when they have families, have bills," Garrett
said.
While the financial outlook for Black Americans is deteriorating, the
net worth of white households is largely holding steady or increasing,
largely due to stock market performance.
Hanks notes that the “chaotic effects” of Trump’s tariffs and spending
cuts are hitting more vulnerable populations right now but that the
damage could soon spread beyond.
[to top of second column] |
 Black leaders see Trump's
policies as discriminatory based on race
The federal layoffs appear to have disproportionately hit Black
Americans because they make up a meaningful share of the government
workforce. The administration maintains that its income tax cuts,
tariffs and deportations of immigrants who are in the United States
illegally will help Black Americans, but there is little evidence so
far in the data of that.
At the same time, Trump has said that he would like to deploy the
National Guard to Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore and Memphis,
Tennessee — cities led by Black mayors. The president has called for
redrawing congressional districts to favor Republicans, which could
dilute the ability of Black voters to shape elections. He has sought
to diminish the legacy of slavery and segregation from the
Smithsonian museums.
“The message that they are sending is very clear: In these places,
these people are incapable of governing themselves,” Baltimore Mayor
Brandon Scott said. “They are incapable of helping to solve their
own issues. And make no mistake about it, it’s partly due to how we
look.”
The Democrat warned that the mounting economic challenges could
contribute to crime in the future, reversing progress that cities
have made in recent years to lower homicide rates.
Trump might not be able to afford alienating Black voters
Black Americans are the dominant core of the Democratic base, though
Trump has improved his standing with them. In 2024, Trump won 16% of
Black voters, doubling his 2020 share, according to AP VoteCast, an
extensive survey of the electorate. One of the key differences
appeared to be frustration over inflation and affordability.
Roughly one-third of Black voters (36%) in the 2024 presidential
election said the economy and jobs was the most important issue
facing the country, up from 11% in 2020, when the coronavirus
pandemic was the top issue.
In a July poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public
Affairs Research, about half of Black adults (52%) said the amount
of money they get paid was a “major" source of stress in their life
right now, slightly higher than for U.S. adults overall (43%) and
significantly higher than for white adults (37%).
When it comes to incomes, some associated with the conservative
movement suggest that Black households are more vulnerable because
fewer of them are in married families, which generally tend to have
higher incomes.
Delano Squires, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative
think tank, said the “connection between family structure and
financial stability is one that is fairly consistent across time.”
The immediate political reality is that Trump had a mandate to
improve the economy for the middle class, including Black voters.
But many of those voters now see an administration more focused on
deporting immigrants and expanding its own grip on power, possibly
threatening Republicans' chances of holding onto the House and key
Senate seats in next year's elections.
“We're in a new era,” said Alexsis Rodgers, political director at
the Black to the Future Action Fund. “There are people who obviously
believed his promises, that Trump was going to do something about
the cost of eggs, the cost of housing. They’ve seen the focus
instead is on ICE raids and downsizing the government.”
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
