Trump’s economic promises to Black voters fall short after a modest shift in support for him in 2024

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.

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 Futures Lab. “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.”