On a hot and muggy evening in Rochester Hills, a suburb of Detroit, the local Republican club is meeting to hone battle plans for the 2024 election. Leading the workshop is Amy Hawkins, an energetic millennial activist and supporter of Donald Trump. She tells the crowd of mostly 60-somethings that the Republican Party needs an attitude adjustment. Don’t shun those who disagree with you, she urges; instead, recognise that “we don’t all have to sing from the same songbook.” Don’t show up in MAGA hats to yell at local school-board officials, she implores; do bake them cookies and tell them you’re praying for them. “What if we became known as the happy party?” she muses.
It is easy to see why Ms Hawkins has chosen to recalibrate Trumpism in this enclave of stately homes occupied by voters with college degrees. When Mr Trump won the White House in 2016, he took Michigan by a mere 11,000 votes. He lost the state’s white, college-educated suburban voters by five points. In 2020 that deficit swelled to 17 points and he lost Michigan to Joe Biden by 154,000 votes. Suburbanites’ rebuke of Mr Trump accounted for three-quarters of the swing against him. To win this year, Mr Trump will need to lure at least some of them back.
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He has work to do. According to national polls from YouGov/The Economist, the former president is polling nationally at 43% among white suburban voters with a college degree. That is three points less than the share he won in 2020, according to Catalist, a progressive political-data firm. How, then, did Mr Trump build a steady lead over Mr Biden this summer? Among educated white suburbanites, at least, it is not so much that Mr Trump is winning; it is that Mr Biden was losing, and the question now is whether a new Democratic nominee can reverse that trend. In 2020 the president won 53% of white, college-educated suburban voters nationally. Across June and July 2024 Mr Biden polled at 43%.
Now that Democrats are to replace him with a younger candidate, will the picture change? There is clear evidence that Kamala Harris, the presumptive nominee, would have an opportunity to improve on Mr Biden’s recent performance. In 2022 Michigan’s popular governor, Gretchen Whitmer, won re-election by a comfortable 11-point margin. She swept the state’s suburbs by 17 points. While there are no apples-to-apples figures available about Mr Biden’s standing in Michigan when he left the race, it is clear from national numbers that his margin was much smaller than that. Ms Harris could attempt to close the gap.
Michigan, suburban counties*, 2023
Share of total votes cast by
suburban voters†, 2020, %
*50% or more of the population live in a suburban zipcode
†Defined by Catalist
Sources: Catalist; Jed Kolko; The Economist
Michigan, suburban counties*, 2023
Share of total votes cast by suburban voters†, 2020, %
*50% or more of the population live in a suburban zipcode
†Defined by Catalist
Sources: Catalist; Jed Kolko; The Economist
Michigan, suburban counties*, 2023
Share of total votes cast by suburban voters†,
2020, %
*50% or more of the population live in a suburban zipcode
†Defined by Catalist
Sources: Catalist; Jed Kolko; The Economist
This summer, particularly after Mr Biden’s cataclysmic debate performance on June 27th and until he ended his campaign on July 21st, Mr Trump has maintained a steady lead in national polls and in every swing state. Yet as the ceiling on his vote-share shows, Mr Trump remains vulnerable in the suburbs. A Democratic comeback would probably pass through swing-state suburban counties like Oakland.
Rochester Hills may appear as if it belongs in a 1960s John Updike novel, but the suburbs are not what they used to be, politically or demographically. For one, they are more racially diverse. Since 1980, the number of white residents in Oakland County has held steady but the number of non-whites has grown from 60,000 to 320,000 in 2020. The county has shifted left during this period; greater diversity is probably one factor, along with changing views among college-educated white voters.
Top: Craig Rood, 45, outside his home in Northville, Michigan, on July 2nd 2024. Mr Rood said his greatest concern in the election was the threat Donald Trump posed to democracy. Bottom: Rose Smith, 67, in Farmington Hills, Michigan, on July 6th 2024. She said the most important issue in the election for her is how mental-health services are delivered. Image: Nic Antaya
Polarisation along educational lines has also changed how suburbanites vote, just as it has in cities and the countryside. Consider Michigan’s tale of two suburban bellwether counties. Between 1972 and 2012, Oakland, where half of adults have college degrees, and its working-class neighbour, Macomb County, where a quarter have degrees, were regarded as lockstep predictors of Michigan’s vote in presidential elections.
Oakland voted for the candidate that won the state ten out of 11 times, while Macomb did so nine times. The average difference in candidate margins across the two counties was just four points. But Mr Trump changed all that. In 2016, Oakland and Macomb diverged by 20 points and Mr Trump won Macomb with 54% of the vote. (Hillary Clinton prevailed in Oakland.)
A step to the left
Presidential vote margin by county, percentage points, sized by population
Since that election, Republicans have found themselves on shaky ground in Michigan. Their once-strong state party fell into disarray, riven by internecine struggles and swamped with debt. And Republicans would surely prefer to forget about the past three elections in the state. In 2018, the first midterm election after Mr Trump took office, Republicans “got slaughtered in Michigan”, says Jason Cabel Roe, a veteran party strategist in the state. Ms Whitmer won the governor’s race, and Democrat women won races for attorney-general and secretary of state. Two more women Democrats, Haley Stevens and Elissa Slotkin, won competitive congressional races, marking the first time since the 1930s that Oakland County had no Republican representatives in the House. “It was very much the year of the woman,” Mr Roe adds.
Michigan, vote margin relative to state average*,
percentage points
Sources: Catalist; Michigan Department of State
It got worse for Republicans in 2022. As Ms Whitmer won her second term easily, a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion in the state’s constitution passed by 13 points. Democrats took control of the state House and Senate, and established their first trifecta in 38 years, controlling the governorship and both chambers of the legislature.
With abortion rights in the state already established, that issue—a probable rallying point for Ms Harris’s campaign—has less salience in Michigan. Suburbanites are most concerned about the economy this time around, according to polling from Emerson College. Generally, Mr Trump polled better than Mr Biden on that issue. Yet so far, there has been little enthusiasm for this election. In the summer of 2020 polling from YouGov/The Economist showed that some 70% of white, college-educated suburban voters were extremely or very enthusiastic about that year’s election. Across June 2024 only about half said the same. In an initial poll after Mr Biden left the race, enthusiasm among Democrats rose to 54%, compared with 43% in a previous poll.
Top: Joe Rizzo, 86, at the tennis courts at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School in Shelby Township, Michigan, on July 6th 2024. Mr Rizzo said inflation had eaten away at his savings and had become an important political issue for him. Bottom: Cheri McQueen, 61, at Red Knapp’s in Rochester, Michigan, on July 5th 2024. Ms McQueen said she plans to vote for Trump in November because of his economic record while president. Image: Nic Antaya
Ms Hawkins’s pitch in Rochester Hills for a kinder, gentler form of Trumpism reflects recent attempts by the national Republican Party to consolidate and extend its candidate’s lead by toning down MAGA pugilism and welcoming never-Trumpers back into the fold. The effort was on display at the party convention in Milwaukee. It is not a natural script for Mr Trump and he did not stick to it for long, but some of his allies on the front lines understand what it takes to win in blue-leaning areas. “The formula is to trim yourself a little bit on the rhetoric and the issues that you talk about,” Mr Roe says. The “guiding principle is to give non-Republicans permission to vote for a Republican.” Even one carrying the baggage of Donald Trump.■
Consumer attitude about both the present and near future dimmed again in April, as tariffs dented sentiment and confidence in employment hit levels last seen around the global financial crisis.
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 86 on the month, down 7.9 points from its prior reading and below the Dow Jones estimate for 87.7.
However, the view of conditions further out deteriorated even more.
The board’s expectations index, which measures how respondents look at the next six months, tumbled to 54.4, a decline of 12.5 points and the lowest reading since October 2011. Board officials said the reading is consistent with a recession.
“The three expectation components — business conditions, employment prospects, and future income—all deteriorated sharply, reflecting pervasive pessimism about the future,” said Stephanie Guichard, the board’s senior economist for global indicator.
Guichard added that the confidence surveys overall were at “levels not seen since the onset of the Covid pandemic.”
Indeed, the level of respondents expecting employment to fall over the next six months hit 32.1%, “nearly as high as in April 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession,” Guichard added. That contraction lasted from December 2007 until June 2009. The level of respondents seeing jobs as “hard to get” rose to 16.6%, up half a percentage point from March, while those seeing jobs as “plentiful” fell to 31.7%, down from 33.6%.
Future income prospects also turned negative for the first time in five years.
The downbeat views extended to the stock market, with 48.5% expecting lower prices in the next 12 months, the worst reading since October 2011. Inflation expectations also surged, at 7% for the next year, the highest since November 2022.
Driving the pessimism was fear over tariffs, which reached an all-time high for the survey. Recession expectations hit a two-year high as well.
In related data Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employment postings in March fell to their lowest level since September 2024. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed 7.19 million positions, down from 7.48 million in February and below the Wall Street expectation of 7.5 million.
Government postings fell by 59,000 amid President Donald Trump’s efforts to pare down the federal workforce. Transportation, warehousing and utilities also saw a drop of 59,000.
The JOLTS survey showed hiring was little changed while layoffs fell by 222,000.
A container ship is shown at the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 22, 2021.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Shipments from China to the west coast of the U.S. will plummet next week as the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs leads companies to cut their import orders.
Gene Seroka, the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he expects incoming cargo volume to slide by more than a third next week compared to the same period in 2024.
“According to our own port optimizer, which measures the loadings in Asia, we’ll be down just a little bit over 35% next week compared to last year. And it’s a precipitous drop in volume with a number of major American retailers stopping all shipments from China based on the tariffs,” Seroka said.
Shipments from China make up about 45% of the business for Port of LA, though some transport companies will be looking to pick up goods at other points in south east Asia to try to fill up their ships, Seroka said.
“Realistically speaking, until some accord or framework can be reached with China, the volume coming out of there — save a couple of different commodities — will be very light at best,” Seroka said.
Along with the lower volume of goods, Seroka said he expects roughly a quarter of the usual number of arriving ships to the port to be canceled in May.
Trump announced a sharp increase in tariffs on Chinese goods on April 2, which led to escalation on both sides, eventually resulting in both the U.S. and China imposing levies of more than 100% on many goods from each other. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described the situation as “unsustainable” but there has been no sign of substantial negotiations between the two countries.
Data on shipments out of China had already started to signal slowing trade volume to the U.S., alarming some economists. Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok recently laid out a timeline where lower imports from China leads to layoffs in transportation and retail industries in the U.S., empty shelves and a recession this summer.
Seroka said he thinks U.S. retailers have about five to seven weeks before the impact of the curtailed shipments shipping begins to bite, partly because companies stocked up with larger shipments ahead of Trump’s tariff announcements.
“I don’t see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online when we’re buying. But if you’re out looking for a blue shirt, you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that’s not yours. So we’ll start seeing less choice on those shelves simply because we’re not getting the variety of goods coming in here based on the additional costs in place. And for that one blue shirt that’s still left, you’ll see a price hike,” Seroka said.
Customers shop in an Adidas store on April 4, 2025 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Sportswear giant Adidas on Tuesday said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs would result in price hikes for all its U.S. products.
The company said it did not yet know by how much it would boost prices, also noting that the global trade dispute was preventing it from raising its full-year outlook despite a bumper increase in first-quarter profits.
“Higher tariffs will eventually cause higher costs for all our products for the US market,” Adidas said in a statement.
The company said it was “somewhat exposed” to White House tariffs on Beijing — currently at an effective rate of 145% — but that it had already reduced exports of its China-made products to the U.S. to a minimum. However, it said the biggest impact was coming from the general increase in U.S. tariffs on all other countries, which are largely held at 10% while trade negotiations take place.
“Given the uncertainty around the negotiations between the US and the different exporting countries, we do not know what the final tariffs will be,” the Adidas statement continued.
“Therefore, we cannot make any ‘final’ decisions on what to do. Cost increases due to higher tariffs will eventually cause price increases, not only in our sector, but it is currently impossible to quantify these or to conclude what impact this could have on the consumer demand for our products.”
Adidas said it was currently unable to produce almost any of its products in the U.S.
The company, best-known for sneakers including Superstar, Sambas, Stan Smiths and Gazelles as well as sportswear, uses factories in countries including Vietnam and Cambodia — which are facing U.S. tariffs upwards of 40% in the absence of a trade deal.
In results that were largely pre-released, net income from continuing operations leapt 155% in the first quarter to 436 million euros ($496.5 million), above the 383 million euros forecast in an LSEG-compiled consensus. Net sales climbed 12.7% to 6.15 billion euros as its operating margin rose 3.8 percentage points to 9.9%.
Analysts at Deutsche Bank said in a Tuesday note that Adidas delivered a “good print with the company making progress across all areas,” despite higher uncertainty.
“So far this year, Adidas has been seeing double digit sales growth across all regions and channels, with wholesale outperforming the direct-to-consumer offering,” Mamta Valechha, consumer discretionary analyst at Quilter Cheviot, said in a note.
“Footwear continues to be a strong performer, with consumers also opting for lifestyle clothing, while the performance category also continues to do well. Adidas will hope these trends continue in the face of the economic uncertainty created by tariffs in the US, but unfortunately we very much have to wait and see before the full impact comes through.”