Conversation starter: Tariff discussion surges
Katherine Engelman
Data Scientist | Mar 27, 2025
2024 was another big election year for the United States. Leading up to the election, the usual hot button topics surged in popularity on Glassdoor community, including “Obamacare”, up 71% year-over-year (YOY) and “disinformation”, up 50% YOY. The word that not only had the highest percent increase YOY when looking at election-related words but had the largest percent increase of all words for 2024 was “tariff” with a 2,017% increase YOY. However, unlike most other words related to the election, most mentions of tariffs occurred following the election, with 71% of all 2024 mentions occurring after November 4th.
After the election was called on November 6th, Glassdoor community users expressed their thoughts on the outcome, whether it be celebration or disappointment. President Trump’s detractors were quick to point out that while the Republican Party is conventionally seen as the fiscally responsible party, the Trump administration’s tariffs are going to hurt people’s bottom lines by increasing the cost of living. This is a sore issue for many people after the years of inflation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who hoped that a change in administration would curb these cost of living expenditures were very surprised to hear about these tariffs. Thus, tariffs became the main talking point for anti-Trump sentiments, leading to a 576% increase in the number of posts mentioning tariffs the week of the election compared to the week prior.
At first blush, this surge of tariff discussions is surprising. Tariffs are generally a more niche topic. For example, in June 2024 after the Biden administration enacted new tariffs on China, there was only a small bump in discussion. The post-election surge in discussions is likely due to the general population realizing that tariffs were potentially going to impact their day-to-day lives too. Similarly, on the week of the election, we can see a surge in Google searches for tariffs including people asking Google point-blank “What is a tariff?”
Following the election, we saw another spike the week of Thanksgiving, with an increase of 182% in posts mentioning tariffs compared to the week before the election, as then President-elect Trump announced his plans to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and 10% tariffs on China on his first day in office.
However, this passionate discussion could only go on for so long. As the month rolled over to December, the election discussions died down as people moved on to their holiday and end-of-year plans.
Once President Trump took office and started putting his economic plans into action, discussions around tariffs started back up again, increasing 1,297% from the week of January 6th to the week of February 3rd. Proponents of President Trump were no longer on the back foot as they originally were in November, now pointing to how he has been using them not as permanent policy but rather as a negotiating tool with Colombia, Mexico, and Canada. Detractors argued that we should not be using such tactics with Canada as they have historically been one of our closest trading partners. Meanwhile, some users were not concerned with the political angle but rather the pure economic repercussions, citing the market’s recent dip in reaction to the tariffs as a cause for concern, along with reiterating their continued worries about potential rising costs of goods due to tariffs.
As of writing, the latest spike occurred the week of March 3rd, when the Trump administration’s tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China went into effect, with mentions increasing 320% from the previous week. However, people quickly grew tired of discussing this turmoil despite other tariffs being threatened throughout March, leading to a steady decline over the rest of the month.
Methodology
Our analysis is based on posts and comments from users on Glassdoor community. Posts were analyzed by performing a word frequency analysis to track how often certain topics were discussed during 2024 and 2025 and then compared to the number of mentions during the same time period the previous year.
Katherine Engelman
Katherine is a data scientist on Glassdoor’s Economic Research team. Her expertise lies in telling clear, approachable, data-driven stories. Previously, Katherine worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where she analyzed large geospatial flood zone datasets. She has a master’s degree in computer science from The Georgia Institute of Technology and a master's in mathematics from Bryn Mawr College.
Tags:Communitytariff discussiontariffs
