WASHINGTON – Even in a world that has grown accustomed to chaos, the confusion and disruption sowed by President Donald Trump has stood out.
In office less than two months, Trump has dismantled government agencies and fired tens of thousands of government workers, then scrambled to hire hundreds of them back because they held crucial jobs like managing the nation’s nuclear weapons.
His scattershot approach to trade – announcing tariffs on certain imports, calling the duties off and later threatening to impose new ones – has thrown financial markets into a tailspin. U.S. stocks rebounded on Friday after a tumultuous week fueled by concerns over Trump’s escalating trade war and fears of a recession, but still posted a fourth straight week of losses.
More: Will there be a recession in 2025? It’s up to Trump, economists say.
Trump and Republicans are urging patience, insisting that the turbulence in the stock market is temporary and that all his disruptive measures will pay off in the long run. GOP lawmakers say they are willing to give the new president the benefit of the doubt, pointing out that he has been in office just a matter of weeks and that more time is needed to know the full impact of his policies.
“He’s been in office for just over, what, 50 days? This is the 51st day in office,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters earlier this week. “Give the president a chance to have these policies play out.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), left, and President Donald Trump shake hands following lunch with Irish prime minister Michael Martin at the House of Representatives at the United States Capitol on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, following the annual Friends of Ireland luncheon.
Democrats warn the chaos Trump has created could inflict long-term damage to the economy and accuse him of hurting the very people he said during the 2024 presidential campaign that he’d protect.
“Donald Trump is wreaking havoc across the federal government and our economy, gutting federal programs millions of hard-working people rely on, just to give billionaires like Elon Musk a free ride,” said Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, who leads a coalition of fiscally-moderate Democrats.
“We see the cost of Trump’s chaos economy in virtually every facet of life,” Schneider said.
Angry voters have shown up at GOP town halls to protest the government cuts orchestrated by Trump and Musk, the billionaire owner of the auto manufacturer Tesla and a presidential adviser who is leading the administration’s downsizing effort through the new Department of Government Efficiency.
More: Chuck Edwards faced Asheville Town Hall backlash; people angered by Trump, Musk’s actions
With Trump’s poll numbers starting to slide and GOP leaders urging their lawmakers to stop holding town halls, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president during last year’s election, have started holding events in Republican states and congressional districts to emphasize the damage they say the Trump cuts would inflict.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a town hall at Roosevelt High School on Friday, March 14, 2025, in Des Moines, Iowa.
Democrats already are looking for a glimmer of hope in the 2028 presidential election, when they will have a chance to win back the White House. Several prominent Democrats have been mentioned as possible candidates, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost last year’s election to Trump, as well as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
Trump, meanwhile, insists that his approach is the correct one and that the United States is on the right track.
“I think this country is going to boom,” he told reporters Tuesday from the White House South Lawn, which he had turned into a car lot in a show of support for Tesla and Musk, who also has come under fire for his role in the government’s downsizing effort.
“I could do it the easy way or the hard way,” Trump said. “The hard way to do it is exactly what I’m doing. But the results are going to be 20 times greater.”
More: ‘We are not defeated’: 5 takeaways on what’s ahead for Democrats in 2025 as Trump returns
Fears that Trump’s moves are ‘too erratic’
The Trump administration’s approach to economic policy is unusual, economist Chris Lafakis said.
“This is not like anything that I’ve seen as a professional economist,” said Lafakis, a director at Moody’s Analytics.
Under federal law, changing regulations involves a multi-step process that includes proposing a new rule, eliciting and evaluating feedback and then rolling out a policy.
Timeline: Trump’s mass federal workforce cuts: What has happened so far
But the speed and the scale of what Trump is doing has worked in his favor, said GOP strategist Mike DuHaime, a former political director for the Republican National Committee.
“Trump has come out at a blistering pace, which has been positive for him because his detractors don’t know where to focus,” DuHaime said.
A man dressed as President Donald Trump poses for photographs next to Douglas Bloomfield from Toronto, Canada and his son Phoenix (R) as they hold up a large Canadian flag outside the White House. Bloomfield bought the flag to the White House while on vacation to show support for Canada as the Trump administration has moved forward on tariffs against their country.
The president, who returned to office in January, is still in the honeymoon phase and has some leeway with the public to prove his approach will work, DuHaime said.
The White House argues Trump’s approach is already working.
“President Trump delivered historic job, wage, and investment growth in his first term, and is set to do so again in his second term,” spokesman Kush Desai said.
But there are signs that many Americans are growing weary.
Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday said Trump is being too erratic in his moves to shake up the economy. Some 70% of respondents – including nine in 10 Democrats and six in 10 Republicans – said they expected higher tariffs will make groceries and other regular purchases more expensive.
Trump’s poll numbers also have dipped as a result of the economic concerns. A Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday put his approval rating at 42%, down from 45% a month earlier. His disapproval rating was 53%,
“Voters are waiting to see if the tariff strategy works or backfires,” DuHaime said, “but they are starting to worry.”
Rhetoric vs. reality: Trump promised a boom. Now he’s bracing Americans for economic turbulence
The same goes for Trump’s foreign policy approach, DuHaime said.
Ukraine, in the third year of its war with Russia, agreed last week to a ceasefire plan negotiated by U.S. officials. The agreement came after weeks of criticism by Trump of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who triggered the conflict by ordering an invasion of his country’s neighbor, said Thursday he supports but won’t immediately agree to the ceasefire because he wants to see an “enduring peace” that removes the “underlying cause” of the crisis.
It’s too soon to know whether Trump’s foreign policy moves will work or be popular, DuHaime said, adding come summer the president “owns the economic and foreign policy successes or failures.”
The GOP holds small majorities in both the House and the Senate and is pushing hard to enact Trump’s agenda before the focus turns to next year’s mid-term elections.
More: What to expect when you’re expecting a GOP trifecta
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during his visit to the Department of Justice to address its workers, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 14, 2025.
Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, said nobody should be surprised by what Trump is doing because he’s following through on campaign promises.
While many Americans see chaos, Nehls said Trump is executing with precision an agenda he laid out during the 2024 presidential contest.
The president is able to do more because he has a team around him that he trusts, said Nehls, an ardent Trump backer who wore a T-shirt adorned with Trump’s mug shot last year to Democrat Joe Biden’s final State of the Union address.
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Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence during Trump’s first term, said he believes much of Trump’s agenda is popular, pointing to his moves on immigration and shrinking the size of government.
“I think that the big outlier on that is his trade policy,” Short said, adding: “If you’re not getting the confidence of the American people on the economy, I think it does undermine a lot of the other agenda.”
Announcing tariffs and then pausing them suggests Trump is “not entirely confident that these policies will work,” Short said. Trump’s approach seems “very whimsical,” Short added, but he noted that the president was very “unpredictable” during his first term too.
The spending cuts identified by the Musk and his team have added to the confusion, with mass layoffs, surprise government-wide emails and the dismantling of agencies. This week, the Department of Education – which Trump has vowed to eliminate – slashed its workforce in half, laying off roughly 1,300 workers and leaving the agency hamstrung to fulfill responsibilities it’s required by law to carry out.
Demonstrators gather outside of the offices of the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. on March 13, 2025 to protest against mass layoffs and budget cuts at the agency, initiated by the Trump administration and DOGE.
A federal judge in California ordered the administration on Thursday to reinstate tens of thousands of probationary workers who had been fired in six departments. U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco said the manner in which the workers were fired was illegal.
Trump also has choreographed some curious moments since his return to office, most recently his White House event to promote Tesla vehicles alongside Musk, the company’s founder. Musk’s efforts have sparked protests at Tesla dealerships. Some dealerships have been vandalized. The company’s stock has dipped.
Pushing back, Trump warned at the White House event that violence against Tesla would be labeled as domestic terrorism.
In a twist, some of Trump’s moves are aimed at undoing clean-air rules that were enacted by Biden and were meant to encourage Americans to buy more electric vehicles like those Musk’s company makes.
“I think that one anecdote was very surreal and ironic,” Short said of the Tesla White House event. “Because conservatives have long opposed taxpayer subsidies that prop up electric vehicle business. And yet there couldn’t have been a bigger promotion than having events on the White House lawn.”
President Donald Trump talks to the media next to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with a Tesla car in the background, at the White House on March 11, 2025.
More: How Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has dominated Trump’s agenda
‘A little bumpy,’ but ‘have faith’
Nehls argued the media has overplayed the confusion caused by Trump’s tariffs and firing of federal workers and is “scaring people.” He pointed to Trump’s comments to a joint session of Congress on March 4 that while his tariffs will cause “a little disturbance … it won’t be much.”
“Trump made it very clear … it’s going to be a little bumpy, but have faith and confidence he knows what he’s doing, and it will be fine,” Nehls said.
Nehls predicted the markets will bounce back and said the policy is an important step toward fair trade and reviving American manufacturing.
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For many conservatives, the moves Trump is making are the fulfillment of long-held dreams.
Tina Descovich, co-founder of the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty, talked about eliminating the Department of Education nearly a decade ago when she ran for school board in Brevard County, Florida. Last week, she was on a call with officials at the department to receive a briefing about the cuts before they were publicly announced.
Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump and Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice participate in a fireside chat during the Moms for Liberty National “Joyful Warriors” Summit, in Washington, U.S., August 30, 2024.
The deep cuts have raised questions about how the U.S. government will carry out various education programs, but Descovich argued they were done in a “thoughtful manner” that protected essential functions.
More broadly, she said, Trump is delivering on an agenda that has been well thought out. She noted that Trump allies spent years creating policy plans to implement when he returned to power and now are rolling them out.
“Change is always hard for people,” said Descovich, who was at the White House recently when Trump signed an executive order banning transgender student athletes from competing in women’s sports.
But the change Trump is delivering will be beneficial, she said.
“The bureaucratic nightmare, swampland of D.C. is a tough one to slay,” Descovich said, but Trump “is slaying the swamp. And that is what America wants, ultimately. Doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a little painful sometimes. Doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a little bumpy. But it is necessary for our strong American future.”
Contributing: Sudiksha Kochi
Follow Zac Anderson on X @zacjanderson and Collins @mcollinsNEWS
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Firings, tariffs and Teslas: How Trump has sown chaos and confusion
