Voting for Trump is costing Latinos their wealth

Donald Trump is a master conflict entrepreneur who trades in false hope and empty promises. To win the 2024 presidential election, he summoned his own rainbow coalition of rage, resentment and nihilism.

Young men voted for him. He won first-time voters and independents. Members of the so-called manosphere rallied to him. He peeled off voters from the Democratic Party’s base — Latinos, Asians and young Black men.

What did these Trump-curious voters get in exchange for putting him back in the White House? Broken promises. Great disappointment. And now, a reckoning.

After nearly 15 months in office, these same voters are now abandoning the president. Polls show that he has lost support among young men, African Americans and working-class voters.  Independent voters disapprove of Trump’s performance by a wide margin, and he is losing support among Republicans more broadly. But the president retains a cultish iron grip on his MAGA followers; according to a recent CNN poll, he retains nearly 100% of support from the coalition.

Latino voters also played a decisive role in returning Trump to the White House. They too are in retreat. Polls show that one-third of Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 now regret their ballot or are disappointed that they supported him. 

They have good reason: Trump’s mass deportations, coupled with a stagnant economy and rising inflation, are costing Latinos their safety, security and wealth.

New research by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) shows that the share of the nation’s wealth held by Latinos decreased by over 20% between 2016 and 2025. Before Trump’s first term, Latino wealth was approximately 2.9% of the nation’s wealth. By the last quarter of 2025, that share had fallen to approximately 2.3%. At just over half a percentage point, the decrease appears small. In fact, in dollar terms, the difference is roughly $1 trillion.

Black Americans have fared no better. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act, along with other tax and budget policies enacted by congressional Republicans, have destroyed a similar percentage of Black wealth.

The country’s billionaire class, though, is feeling no pain. By comparison, this group saw its total wealth grow by 20% in 2025 alone, a percentage that represents a $1.5 trillion increase. Since the super-rich are adept at concealing their wealth, the actual number is likely much higher.

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The steep decline in Latino wealth, explained ATF executive director David Kass, “is a clear signal that the Trump-GOP economy favors the billionaire class, who are almost exclusively white.”

This racial wealth gap is widening by design. The Trump administration and the MAGA Republicans have systematically targeted the Black and brown professional class, gutted educational funding that supports intergenerational mobility and slashed the federal workforce. Much of this was carried out under the pretext of fighting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; “woke” ideology; and reverse discrimination against white men.

The baseline numbers are stark. While the median white household has approximately $250,000 in wealth, Latino families have $64,000. A far higher percentage of Latino households have zero or negative wealth than white households. When cars are excluded from these calculations, the racial wealth gap increases significantly. 

There are human faces to these numbers, these struggles. One is Hernan, a Latino student at Seminole State College who told NPR in May 2025 that Florida’s decision to take away in-state tuition for immigrant students who are protected under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) means that his education is no longer affordable. “I feel that if I don’t have this right now, I can’t begin my life…. I consider this state my home. I’m going to keep fighting.”

For many Americans, wealth has been created and passed along intergenerationally through home ownership and the financial opportunities it creates. But Latinos and other racial minorities were historically denied those opportunities below, and most have been unable to catch up.

ATF’s findings reinforce how race and class intersect in America. Trump’s racial authoritarian political project is also a plutocratic project designed to transfer more wealth — not just from Latinos and other people of color, but from all Americans — to the rich and to corporations. Racism doesn’t just hurt Black and brown Americans, but white Americans as well. This is a recurring theme in American history, and economists have estimated that racism and other forms of discrimination costs the domestic economy around $1 trillion a year in lost productivity and economic growth.

Like other authoritarian movements, Trump’s coalition has many potential fracture points. Authoritarian leaders, and the movements that bring them into power, excel at destroying things. This trait provides them with both a short-term competitive advantage and a long-term design flaw: Elements of the movement will, at some point, turn on each other and abandon their Great Leader who, in turn, will almost always turn against their followers because they are narcissistic, egomaniacal and convinced of their infallibility.

But it is also true that a meaningful number of Latinos and other non-whites will remain loyal to Trump and MAGA ideology regardless — even as the administration imprisons and deports their family members, creates a 21st-century version of Jim and Jane Crow, and tries to whitewash American society and life. These Black and brown MAGA people — a group I describe as “Chickens for Colonel Sanders” — will likely never leave the president. The psychological adhesion is too strong.

There are no guarantees that Latinos and other non-white Trump-curious voters will return to the Democratic Party in the November midterms and the 2028 presidential election. In fact, a group of Black Trump swing voters recently told CNN that Democrats must give them a compelling reason to vote for the party, and not just against Trump and Republicans. Ahead of the midterms, Democrats need to be able to answer two questions in clear, concrete ways: “What have you done for me lately?” and “What will you do for me in the future?”

In response to Latinos, “Trump took away your wealth” is a good first answer. But a more durable and inspiring response from Democrats will demand much more: a concrete opportunity agenda detailing how the party will seek to restore prosperity for all Americans, and not just the rich.

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