A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds 57% of Americans disapprove of President Trump's handling of the economy, while 36% approve, according to NPR reporting published June 18, 2026.

The June figure is a measurable improvement from where Trump stood in May, when 61% of respondents told the Marist Poll they disapproved of his economic stewardship — itself up from 58% disapproval recorded in March 2026. The trajectory over the spring was unambiguously negative; the June reading interrupts that slide without reversing it.

Comparing across the full arc of Trump's second term sharpens the picture. In April 2025, Marist recorded 39% approval on the economy — a figure that held into February 2026, when an NPR/PBS News/Marist survey again found 39% overall job approval and noted that negative economic ratings had reached a new high at that point. The June poll's 36% economic approval sits below even those early-term baselines, meaning the net movement over roughly 14 months has been downward despite the partial June recovery on disapproval.

The Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducts the Marist Poll in partnership with NPR and PBS News, has tracked Trump's economic numbers continuously since his second inauguration. The polling series gives operatives and forecasters a consistent methodological baseline — the same sponsor, the same question framing — which makes the directional shifts more reliable than cross-vendor comparisons.

For Republican strategists and Hill leadership, a 57/36 split on the economy is a structural problem entering a midterm cycle. Economic approval has historically been among the strongest single-variable predictors of midterm seat swings, and a gap of 21 percentage points between disapproval and approval gives Democratic challengers a durable attack line in competitive districts. The partial improvement from May's 61% disapproval does create a narrow counter-argument — that the numbers are moving in the right direction — but a 57% disapproval floor is a difficult foundation on which to build a nationalized midterm message.

The June data point also lands at a moment when gas prices and cost-of-living concerns remain front-of-mind for voters, factors the NPR reporting tied directly to the polling results. Whether the four-point drop in disapproval between May and June reflects any real shift in household economic conditions, or simply normal polling variance, will depend on whether subsequent surveys sustain the trend.