Americans Want Trump Admin. to Focus More on Domestic Policy than Foreign Affairs
Over the past 10 months, President Donald Trump has managed to secure victories both at home and abroad, but polling data is suggesting that Americans would like to see the Trump administration focus more of its time and energy on domestic issues.
In a Rasmussen Reports survey released Monday, 62% of Americans said that “it would be better if Trump spent more time dealing with domestic issues like the economy.” Nearly 30% said that the president is “spending too much time dealing with foreign policy issues,” although 40% said that the Trump administration is handling foreign policy issues as it should be. However, a majority of voters of every political stripe — 70% of Democrats, 54% of Republicans, and 61% of Independent or unaffiliated voters — want the president to spend more time on domestic issues. Notably, voters aged 50 and older are more likely than younger voters to say that the Trump administration is “spending about the right amount of time” dealing with foreign policy issues.
Another survey, released October 29 by Big Data Poll, found that 51.9% of voters — including 38.5% of Trump 2024 voters, 37.2% of Republicans overall, and 54.7% of Independent or unaffiliated voters — said that the Trump administration is “too focused on foreign affairs” and “not enough on domestic issues,” such as the economy, the job market, and inflation.
On foreign policy issues, 47.2% of voters approved of the president’s job performance and 47.2% disapproved: the only issue in the survey on which the president’s job performance broke even. On the economy and jobs, the Trump administration had a disapproval rating of four percent (45.5% approve, 49.5% disapprove) and a disapproval rating of 20.4% (37.5% approve, 57.9% disapprove) on inflation and the cost of living. The only issue on which the Trump administration was above water was immigration and border security (51.1% approve, 44.6% disapprove).
According to Morning Consult’s quarterly U.S. Foreign Policy Tracker, most Americans rank terrorism (47%) and immigration (43%) as their top foreign policy and foreign policy-adjacent concerns, while nearly a third (32%) consider “protecting human rights globally” to be an issue of concern. Meanwhile, less than a quarter of Americans rate a nuclear deal with Iran (22%), relations with China (21%), the Israel-Hamas conflict (21%), or the Russia-Ukraine conflict (18%) as a foreign policy priority.
A November report from the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group also found that “Americans are most concerned about problems close to home,” rather than international ordeals. In particular, the survey found that top concerns for Democrats include gun violence (56%) and “democratic decline” (51%), while Republicans are more focused on rising crime rates (44%) and illegal immigration (39%).
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.


