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Joe Biden’s weakness among Latinos threatens his re-election

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In Arizona, a growing Hispanic electorate should help Democrats. Yet Donald Trump is gaining ground

Image: Caitlin O’Hara

Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, first won elected office in Arizona in 2010, a time of fierce battles over immigration. That year, Republicans passed SB1070, known as the “show me your papers” law, which required state police to ask individuals they suspected of being undocumented to provide proof of their status. Joe Arpaio, the publicity-minded sheriff in Arizona’s most populous county, recruited right-leaning Hollywood actors to a “posse” he formed to track down illegal migrants. Although the Supreme Court struck down most of SB1070’s provisions and voters ousted Mr Arpaio in 2016, “those scars aren’t going away,” says Mr Gallego, now a congressman running for an open Senate seat. He says the legacy of Latino activism from the Arpaio era may explain why, in 2020, Arizona Latinos voted for Joe Biden in higher numbers than Latinos nationally did, helping to deliver Mr Biden a narrow 10,000-vote victory in the state.

Yet Donald Trump is once again testing Democrats’ assumptions. He gained some 90,000 Latino voters in Arizona between 2016 and 2020 despite having pardoned Mr Arpaio for a criminal-contempt conviction, calling him an “American patriot” who “kept Arizona safe”. And if current polling is anything to go by, Mr Trump looks set to cut further into Mr Biden’s margins with Latino voters come November.

The Latino electorate is growing unusually fast and a majority still prefers Democrats. Of the six swing states likely to decide the presidential election in November (the other five being Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), Arizona has the largest share of Latino voters. Mr Trump is clearly gaining popularity among Hispanics. However, current polling suggests that Latino voters still prefer Democrats overall, just by a smaller margin than in the past—meaning that it is Mr Biden who will benefit from the growth in Latino voters. The outcome in Arizona will depend largely on the race between these two trends.

Hispanic population in Arizona, % of total

Sources: Pew Research Centre; US Census

The Arizona contest reflects fluidity in the national Latino vote. The group has never constituted a political monolith. It includes both Florida’s right-leaning refugees from Cuba’s socialist dictatorship and California’s proud leftist heirs to Chicano activism. Yet because, on average, Latino voters came to America more recently than non-Hispanic white and black Americans, they are less likely to have inherited a strong party affiliation from their parents or grandparents. They also “are more likely to hold what political scientists call cross-cutting identities”, or traits more commonly found among people outside one’s political tribe, says Samara Klar, a political scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. An evangelical Democrat might sound like an oxymoron but half of evangelical Latinos say the Democratic Party represents their interests. Because of cross-cutting identities, “Latino voters know a lot more people from the other party and they’re less hostile” towards them, notes Dr Klar.

Latinos also tend to have less extreme views. Compared with white Americans, they are less likely to identify as very conservative or very liberal. In a recent YouGov/The Economist poll one in seven said they do not know where they fall on the political spectrum, three times the number of white Americans who said the same.

Given these attributes, it should be little surprise that although Latinos as a whole lean Democratic, millions have voted for Republican candidates. Exit polls suggest that as far back as 1984 Ronald Reagan won some 37% of the Latino vote. By 2004 George W. Bush’s approximate 40% share was a high-water mark that even Mr Trump has yet to achieve.

Arizona, Hispanics as % of population

By census tract, 2021

Share of total votes cast by Hispanic voters, 2020, %

Arizona, Hispanics as % of population

By census tract, 2021

Share of total votes cast Hispanic voters, 2020, %

Arizona, Hispanics as % of population

By census tract, 2021

Share of total votes cast

by Hispanic voters, 2020, %

Democrats have assumed at their peril that Latinos are a natural constituency and share many of the party’s (increasingly) progressive preferences. “Latinos are not the black vote and Democrats just don’t understand that,” says Mike Madrid, a veteran Republican strategist. Yet Republicans have at times fallen into the same trap, assuming that Latinos leaned so Democratic that courting them was futile. “There were no Latino organisers in the Republican Party for 30 years,” adds Mr Madrid.

That has changed. In 2020 Republicans made gains with Latinos across the board. Voter profiles from Catalist, a political-data firm that helps Democrats, show that although Democrats won Latinos outright, Republicans increased their vote share among all subgroups of Latino voters. Their strides were especially large with non-college-educated Latinos. They swung 11 percentage points to the right between 2016 and 2020. Republicans also gained six points among college-educated Latinos. And while Mr Trump did not generally make notable gains among young voters between 2016 and 2020, young Latinos lurched to the right. Mr Trump’s share of votes from 18- to 29-year-old Latinos increased from 21% to 31%.

Some of this Republican momentum might be a reversion to the mean. Latino support for Barack Obama, the first minority nominee, and Hillary Clinton, the first female one, may have been unusually strong. Without Mrs Clinton to inspire them, Latinas swung towards Mr Trump by 12 percentage points in 2020. But why else did Republican gains materialise in such a pronounced way in 2020?

Top: A Phoenix food vendor who declined to be named said he intends to vote for Donald Trump in 2024.
Bottom: Arizona State University student Jazlyn Gonzalez, 19, said that while the US presidential vote in November “is really important”, she is as yet undecided about her choice. Image: Caitlin O’Hara

Covid may have been a factor. The disease disproportionately killed Latinos and strained their incomes. Some 24% of Latinos were employed as low-income front-line workers, more than any other race or ethnicity. About one in four new businesses are Hispanic-owned. So although Democrats’ focus on lockdowns and containing the disease may have saved many Latinos’ lives, it was perceived as threatening their livelihoods. Meanwhile, Mr Trump and Republican governors across the country advocated for fewer restrictions and a swift return to normal. According to a report by Equis Research, an outfit that studies Latino political behaviour, “Latino voters saw the 2020 election as a referendum on the economy…in a way they hadn’t in 2016.”

About 85% of Arizona’s Latino voters trace their origins to Mexico, a cohort whose views typically track Latino national averages. Yet whereas Democrats’ lead over Republicans among Latinos shrank by 16 points nationally in 2020, in Arizona their lead narrowed by only 9.6 points. Had Mr Trump performed among Arizona Latinos as he did nationally he would have won the state. His prospects have improved since then. Even after accounting for Democrats’ strength in Arizona, current polling suggests Mr Biden’s chances of winning the state in November are on a knife’s edge.

Holding constant the advantage Democrats had among Latinos in Arizona in 2020, Mr Biden is currently up by 17 percentage points among Latinos in the state, an 8.4-point shift to the right. An equivalent erosion in support would have cost Mr Biden 50,000 votes in 2020, enough for him to lose the state. Yet Republicans appear poorly positioned to seize upon their gains as the 2024 general-election campaign gets under way. Four years ago the Republican National Committee (RNC) invested early and heavily to win over Latino voters. This year the RNC is starved for cash. It has just $8m on hand compared with $77m at this point in 2020. And the Arizona Republican Party has been hobbled by dysfunction and factional disputes. All this bodes ill because campaign pros say the formula for winning an election that requires a surge in turnout is simple: spend money and reach out to voters early and often.

Mr Biden could still win the White House while losing Arizona. Assuming that the forecasts of a tight race prove accurate, and that Mr Biden holds on to Pennsylvania and Michigan, which are his strongest prospects among the half-dozen swing states, he would need to win at least one more of them. But Mr Biden’s loosening grip on the Latino vote— which is a significant factor in other closely contested states, particularly Nevada—is hardly encouraging.

Democrats are betting that the electoral maths will continue to favour them in Arizona because the Latino electorate will continue to grow. (They also expect Mr Biden’s standing with voters to improve by November.) The number of Latinos voting in Arizona has in fact increased steadily over the past two decades. This year alone there will be 150,000 newly eligible Latino voters in the state. And Arizona Latinos seem particularly motivated. In 2020 a striking 67% of eligible Latino voters in Arizona went to the polls, compared with 54% nationally (which was the lowest of all major racial and ethnic groups). If Latino turnout again reaches 67% in November, that would mean that Democrats could lose nearly four points from their Arizona margins over Republicans in 2020 and still net just as many votes.

“Who do you think would do a better job

handling the following issues as president?”

Source: YouGov/The Economist

“Who do you think would do a better job handling the

following issues as president?”, United States, %

“Who do you think would do a better job handling the

following issues as president?”, United States, %

Yet it is not a sure bet that Latinos will comprise a larger share of the electorate in 2024. Mr Biden and Mr Trump are both deeply unpopular candidates. Latinos are especially lukewarm on both. In national-level polling from YouGov/The Economist Hispanic respondents are roughly twice as likely as white ones to say that neither candidate would do a good job handling the issues they prioritise: the economy, inflation, health care and immigration. Among those who select a candidate, Mr Biden is viewed as stronger on health care while Mr Trump is seen as stronger on immigration.
Latino attitudes about immigration do not align neatly with the policies of either major party. Polling from Unidos, a lobbying group, found that roughly 83% of the Latinos they surveyed in Arizona in November 2023 supported a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, long a Democratic goal. Yet in that same survey 63% favoured securing the border, the signature cause of Republicans. “Republicans only want border security. They don’t want a pathway to citizenship…they just want moats and crocodiles and hot oil on the border,” argues Mr Madrid. And Democrats are often seen as having prioritised everything but a secure border. Between July and October of 2023 Arizona had more migrant encounters on its southern border than any other state and the crisis has persisted this year. Republicans will be hoping that Democrats bear the brunt of the political fallout.

Top: Samual Lopez, 31, who said he is voting for Donald Trump in November, added that he is frustrated at the US sending aid to Ukraine when there is a large population of homeless people in Phoenix.
Bottom: Ayling Dominguez, 26, who works as an advocate for immigrant rights, said Latino voters should “evolve the way we see our power and choices in electoral politics.” Image: Caitlin O’Hara

Economic issues may also hurt Mr Biden. Until 2019 housing in the Phoenix metropolitan area, where two-thirds of the state’s population lives, was cheaper than the nationwide average. Residents there now shell out 12% more than average. Inflation also spiked higher in Phoenix during 2022 than in any other city, although it has since fallen below the national average. In November 2023 some 59% of Latinos in the state said inflation was one of their most pressing concerns. That cannot be helping Mr Biden’s standing.

These perceptions may yet change as inflation softens. But views on access to abortion tend to be more fixed, and here Democrats retain an advantage. Some 65% of Arizona Latinos think that, no matter their personal views, it is wrong to make abortion illegal. In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion, a surge of women registered to vote in Arizona. In November Arizonans may vote on a referendum that would protect a woman’s right to an abortion through viability, or about 24 weeks of pregnancy. That could increase Democrat-leaning turnout.

Political campaigns come and go, but Democrats’ outreach to Latinos is maintained during off-cycle years with a vast network of grassroots Latino organisations that hew progressive. “This does not exist on the Republican side of the equation,” laments Helder Toste, a former field director at the Republican National Senatorial Committee.

These dynamics will affect more than just the presidential ticket. They may well help decide which party controls the House and the Senate. Mr Gallego, who currently represents parts of Phoenix in the House of Representatives, will probably do battle with Kari Lake, a Trump acolyte and election-denier, for Kyrsten Sinema’s open Senate seat. The state also has two competitive House races. One features an incumbent and rising star, Juan Ciscomani, a Mexican-born Republican who gave the party’s Spanish-language response to Joe Biden’s state-of-the-union speech in 2023.

The election is still more than seven months away and many Latino voters have not tuned in yet. According to polling from YouGov/The Economist, 38% of Hispanic respondents, compared with 23% of white respondents, say they are paying little or no attention to the 2024 presidential campaigns. In the autumn, when more Latino voters take note, they are likely to be bombarded with messages that the fate of the nation lies in their hands. In Arizona at least, the adverts will not be all exaggeration.

Sources: YouGov; Catalist; Redistricting Data Hub; US Census Bureau; OpenStreetMap; Pew Research Centre; Federal Election Commission; All About Redistricting; ArcGIS; The Economist

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Economics

ADP jobs report March 2025:

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Attendees check in during a job fair at the YMCA Gerard Carter Center on March 27, 2025 in the Stapleton Heights neighborhood of the Staten Island borough in New York City. 

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Private payroll gains were stronger than expected in March, countering fears that the labor market and economy are slowing, according to a report Wednesday from ADP.

Companies added 155,000 jobs for the month, a sharp increase from the upwardly revised 84,000 in February and better than the Dow Jones consensus forecast for 120,000, the payrolls processing firm said.

The upside surprise comes amid worries that President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariffs could deter firms from adding to headcount and in turn slow business and consumer activity. Trump is set to announce the next step in his trade policy Wednesday at 4 p.m.

Hiring was fairly broad based, with professional and business services adding 57,000 workers while financial activities grew by 38,000 as tax season heats up. Manufacturing contributed 21,000 and leisure and hospitality added 17,000.

Service providers were responsible for 132,000 of the positions. On the downside, trade, transportation and utilities saw a loss of 6,000 jobs and natural resources and mining declined by 3,000.

On the wage side, earnings rose by 4.6% year over year for those staying in their positions and 6.5% for job changers. The gap between the two matched a series low last hit in September, suggesting a lower level of mobility for workers wanting to switch jobs.

Still, the overall numbers indicate a solid labor market. Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that the level of open positions is now almost even with available workers, reversing a trend in which openings outnumbered the unemployed by 2 to 1 a couple years ago.

The ADP report comes ahead of the more closely watched BLS measure of nonfarm payrolls. The BLS report, which unlike ADP includes government jobs, is expected to show payroll growth of 140,000 in March, down slightly from 151,000 in February. The two counts sometimes show substantial disparities due to different methodologies.

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Trump tariffs’ effect on consumer prices debated by economists

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The U.S. government is set to increase tariff rates on several categories of imported products. Some economists tracking these trade proposals say the higher tariff rates could lead to higher consumer prices.

One model constructed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston suggests that in an “extreme” scenario, heightened taxes on U.S. imports could result in a 1.4 percentage point to 2.2 percentage point increase to core inflation. This scenario assumes 60% tariff rates on Chinese imports and 10% tariff rates on imports from all other countries.

The researchers note that many other tariff proposals have surfaced since they published their findings in February 2025. 

Price increases could come across many categories, including new housing and automobiles, alongside consumer services such as nursing, public transportation and finance. 

“People might think, ‘Oh, tariffs can only affect the goods that I buy. It can’t affect the services,'” said Hillary Stein, an economist at the Boston Fed. “Those hospitals are buying inputs that might be, for example, … medical equipment that comes from abroad.” 

White House economists say tariffs will not meaningfully contribute to inflation. In a statement to CNBC, Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said that “as the world’s largest source of consumer demand, the U.S. holds all the leverage, which means foreign suppliers will have to eat the economic burden or ‘incidence’ of the tariffs.” 

Assessing the impact of the administration’s full economic agenda has been a challenge for central bank leaders. The Federal Open Market Committee decided to leave its target for the federal funds rate unchanged at the meeting in March. 

The Fed targets its overnight borrowing rate at between 4.25% and 4.5%, with the effective federal funds rate at 4.33% on March 31, according to the New York Fed. The core personal consumption expenditures price index inflation rate rose to 2.8% in February, according to the Commerce Department. Forecasts of U.S. gross domestic product suggest that the economy will continue to grow at a 1.7% rate in 2025, albeit at a slower pace than what was forecast in January.  

Consumers in the U.S. and businesses around the world are bracing for impact. 
 
“There is a reason why companies went outside of the U.S.,” said Gregor Hirt, chief investment officer at Allianz Global Investors. “Most of the time it was because it was cheaper and more productive.” 

Watch the video above to learn how much inflation tariffs may cause.

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Trump’s tariff gambit will raise the stakes for an economy already looking fragile

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks alongside entertainer Kid Rock before signing an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on March 31, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

President Donald Trump is set Wednesday to begin the biggest gamble of his nascent second term, wagering that broad-based tariffs on imports will jumpstart a new era for the U.S. economy.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

As the president prepares his “liberation day” announcement, household sentiment is at multi-year lows. Consumers worry that the duties will spark another round of painful inflation, and investors are fretting that higher prices will mean lower profits and a tougher slog for the battered stock market.

What Trump is promising is a new economy not dependent on deficit spending, where Canada, Mexico, China and Europe no longer take advantage of the U.S. consumer’s desire for ever-cheaper products.

The big problem right now is no one outside the administration knows quite how those goals will be achieved, and what will be the price to pay.

“People always want everything to be done immediately and have to know exactly what’s going on,” said Joseph LaVorgna, who served as a senior economic advisor during Trump’s first term in office. “Negotiations themselves don’t work that way. Good things take time.”

For his part, LaVorgna, who is now chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities, is optimistic Trump can pull it off, but understands why markets are rattled by the uncertainty of it all.

“This is a negotiation, and it needs to be judged in the fullness of time,” he said. “Eventually we’re going to get some details and some clarity, and to me, everything will fit together. But right now, we’re at that point where it’s just too soon to know exactly what the implementation is likely to look like.”

Here’s what we do know: The White House intends to implement “reciprocal” tariffs against its trading partners. In other words, the U.S. is going to match what other countries charge to import American goods into their countries. Most recently, a figure of 20% blanket tariffs has been bandied around, though LaVorgna said he expects the number to be around 10%, but something like 60% for China.

What is likely to emerge, though, will be far more nuanced as Trump seeks to reduce a record $131.4 billion U.S. trade deficit. Trump professes his ability to make deals, and the saber-rattling of draconian levies on other countries is all part of the strategy to get the best arrangement possible where more goods are manufactured domestically, boosting American jobs and providing a fairer landscape for trade.

The consequences, though, could be rough in the near term.

Potential inflation impact

On their surface, tariffs are a tax on imports and, theoretically, are inflationary. In practice, though, it doesn’t always work that way.

During his first term, Trump imposed heavy tariffs with nary a sign of longer-term inflation outside of isolated price increases. That’s how Federal Reserve economists generally view tariffs — a one-time “transitory” blip but rarely a generator of fundamental inflation.

This time, though, could be different as Trump attempts something on a scale not seen since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs in 1930 that kicked off a global trade war and would be the worst-case scenario of the president’s ambitions.

“This could be a major rewiring of the domestic economy and of the global economy, a la Thatcher, a la Reagan, where you get a more enabled private sector, streamlined government, a fair trading system,” Mohamed El-Erian, the Allianz chief economic advisor, said Tuesday on CNBC. “Alternatively, if we get tit-for-tat tariffs, we slip into stagflation, and that stagflation becomes well anchored, and that becomes problematic.”

Tariffs could be a major rewiring of the domestic and global economy, says Mohamed El-Erian

The U.S. economy already is showing signs of a stagflationary impulse, perhaps not along the lines of the 1970s and early ’80s but nevertheless one where growth is slowing and inflation is proving stickier than expected.

Goldman Sachs has lowered its projection for economic growth this year to barely positive. The firm is citing the “the sharp recent deterioration in household and business confidence” and second-order impacts of tariffs as administration officials are willing to trade lower growth in the near term for their longer-term trade goals.

Federal Reserve officials last month indicated an expectation of 1.7% gross domestic product growth this year; using the same metric, Goldman projects GDP to rise at just a 1% rate.

In addition, Goldman raised its recession risk to 35% this year, though it sees growth holding positive in the most-likely scenario.

Broader economic questions

However, Luke Tilley, chief economist at Wilmington Trust, thinks the recession risk is even higher at 40%, and not just because of tariff impacts.

“We were already on the pessimistic side of the spectrum,” he said. “A lot of that is coming from the fact that we didn’t think the consumer was strong enough heading into the year, and we see growth slowing because of the tariffs.”

Tilley also sees the labor market weakening as companies hold off on hiring as well as other decisions such as capital expenditure-type investments in their businesses.

That view on business hesitation was backed up Tuesday in an Institute for Supply Management survey in which respondents cited the uncertain climate as an obstacle to growth.

“Customers are pausing on new orders as a result of uncertainty regarding tariffs,” said a manager in the transportation equipment industry. “There is no clear direction from the administration on how they will be implemented, so it’s harder to project how they will affect business.”

While Tilley thinks the concern over tariffs causing long-term inflation is misplaced — Smoot-Hawley, for instance, actually ended up being deflationary — he does see them as a danger to an already-fragile consumer and economy as they could tend to weaken activity further.

“We think of the tariffs as just being such a weight on growth. It would drive up prices in the initial couple [inflation] readings, but it would create so much economic weakness that they would end up being net deflationary,” he said. “They’re a tax hike, they’re contractionary, they’re going to weigh on the economy.”

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