American adult support for free trade has reached as all-time high as President Donald Trump continues to press China for reciprocal trade, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
"While Trump plays a game of chicken on tariffs, a record number of Americans believe that free trade is good," Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt at Hart Research Associates told NBC News.
Free trade now has the support of 64% of Americans in the poll, a record high and 7-point increase from the last time the question was posed in the poll in 2017.
"If Donald Trump is for it and you're a Democrat, you move in a very different direction," Hart Research's Republican pollster Bill McInturff told NBC News.
Just 27% of Americans see free trade as bad because it hurts manufacturing.
Also, in the NBC News/WSJ poll, President Trump's approval rating is just 43%, down 2 points since July – while 55% disapprove in a rise of 3 points.
"This is not an attractive set of numbers for an incumbent," McInturff told NBC News.
Just 40% of registered voters say they will at least "probably" vote for Trump, while 52% say they will at least "probably" vote for the Democratic nominee – basically no change from December 2018 – according to the poll.
"Americans typically rally around their president in times of national tumult and tragedy," Dem pollster Horwitt told NBC News. "Yet again, in his response to the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, we see that Americans view Donald Trump and his reactions to national tragedies far differently."
The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Aug. 10-14 among 1,000 adults and has a margin of error or plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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