U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at Rocky Mount Event Center in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, U.S., December 19, 2025. REUTERS/Jessica Koscielniak
During former President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, liberal economist and then-New York Times columnist Paul Krugman aggressively defended his handling of the U.S. economy. Krugman stressed that Biden, despite inheriting a deadly pandemic, kept unemployment rates under 4 percent for much of his presidency and oversaw a period of massive job creation.
But Krugman also acknowledged the frustration that many Americans felt because of inflation, and he used the term "vibecession" to describe that angst. When Americans angrily reacted to rising grocery prices, Krugman observed, they weren't thinking about employment numbers coming from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
That "vibecession" helped Donald Trump pull off a narrow victory over then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Now 11 months into his second presidency, Trump is the one feeling the heat over the economy.
In an opinion column published on December 21, the New York Times' Ezra Klein argues that the "Trump vibe shift" of late 2024 and early 2025 is officially "dead."
"The Trump vibe shift was American culture and institutions moving toward President Trump and Trumpism with a force unexplained by his narrow electoral victory," Klein says. "It was (Facebook's) Mark Zuckerberg donning a chain and saying that the corporate world was too hostile to 'masculine energy.' It was corporate executives using Trump as an excuse to wrest control of their companies back from their workers. It was the belief that Trump's 2024 coalition — which stretched from Stephen Miller and Laura Loomer to Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joe Rogan and Tulsi Gabbard — was the arrival of something new rather than, as many thought in 2016, the final heave of something old."
But Klein emphasizes that there has been a major shift since then.
"As 2025 closes, Trump's polling sits in the low 40s, with some surveys showing him tumbling into the 30s," the Times columnist observes. "Democrats routed Republicans across the year's elections, winning governorships in New Jersey and Virginia easily and overperforming in virtually every race they contested. Moderate Republicans broke with Speaker Mike Johnson to bring to the House floor a Democratic bill to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies."
Klein continues, "Marjorie Taylor Greene is retiring. Elon Musk said he regretted joining the administration to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Joe Rogan called Trump's immigration policy 'insane.' The right is at war with itself over the Epstein files and how much antisemitism and anti-Indian racism is too much antisemitism and anti-Indian racism. A year ago, we kept hearing that Trump was cool now. Is anyone saying that now?.... Now, Trumpism is failing both the voters and the vibes."
Ezra Klein's full article for The New York Times is available at this link (subscription required).