Are AAPIs Rapidly Unifying Behind President Trump’s Agenda?

COMMENTARY

Are AAPIs Rapidly Unifying Behind President Trump’s Agenda?

By Karthick Ramakrishnan
Jan. 24, 2025

In his inauguration speech on January 20, President Trump noted support for his policy agenda from a diverse nation.

He stated that “the entire nation is rapidly unifying behind our agenda with dramatic increases in support from virtually every element of our society. Young and old, men and women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, urban, suburban and rural.”

How true is this statement among Asian American communities?

Exit polls from the National Election Pool showed that Trump enjoyed a 5 percentage point increase between 2020 and 2024 among Asian American voters, even as he lost to Harris among this fast-growing demographic by 55% to 40%. Most pre-election surveys, including our own at AAPI Data, indicated that AAPI community concerns about inflation and the economy played a significant role in shaping vote choice during the 2024 election.

The question remains, however, as to whether Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are “rapidly unifying” behind President Trump’s policy agenda.

In December 2024, AAPI Data, the Associated Press and NORC fielded our regular survey of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults, gauging public opinion about President-elect Trump’s declared policy priorities, emotions surrounding the incoming administration, and confidence in his ability to govern effectively in the coming year.

The full results from the survey, including detailed cross-tabulations, can be found here.

Trump Gains Support, but is Still Disfavored

President Trump gained significant support among AAPI adults since the election.

While only 27% of AAPI adults held a favorable opinion of him in October 2023 and in September 2024, 37% held a favorable opinion of him in December 2024. Still, more AAPIs held a favorable view of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris after the 2024 election (41% and 48%, respectively), even though both had lost considerable support from earlier surveys. Additionally, 60 percent of AAPI adults viewed Trump unfavorably, suggesting that he still has a far way to go towards earning their support.

Within the AAPI community, however, we see several groups where Trump has greater support—among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, Filipinos, men in general, and among those aged 60 and higher (Figure 1).

Split Opinion or Opposition to Most Trump Priorities

We asked survey respondents whether they favored or opposed eight key items in Trump’s policy priorities, ranging from mass deportations and tariffs to shrinking the federal workforce and eliminating taxes on wages from tips.

The results indicate very little support for most items on Trump’s agenda (Figure 2). Eliminating taxes on earnings from tips is the only item that received close to majority support or clear net support, meaning more in favor than in opposition.

AAPI adults were divided on mass deportations and on significantly reducing the size of the federal workforce, and they were largely opposed to rollbacks in clean energy projects and tariffs on imported goods from China and elsewhere. AAPI adults were also strongly opposed to President Trump’s declared plans to pardon most people who participated in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Finally, AAPI adults saw 2025 as posing significant threats to a variety of rights, most notably abortion/reproductive rights, freedom of the press, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly (Figure 3).

Key Differences Emerge by Gender, Age, Nativity, and Ethnicity

Against this more general backdrop of opposition to President Trump’s agenda, important variations emerge in our data when we examine differences within the community: 

1. Gender: AAPI women are more likely than men to express feelings of fear and anger towards President Trump’s second term (Figure 4), and hold less favorable opinions on Trump than men (33% vs 42%). Interestingly, we see no statistically significant difference between women and men on seeing a major threat to abortion rights in 2025.

2. Age: Younger AAPIs (age 18 to 29) are more likely to oppose policy moves on mass deportation, rollbacks in clean energy, and significant reductions in federal workforce. Young AAPIs are also more likely to have an unfavorable view of Trump and they see greater threats to various rights. In some instances, we also find that older AAPIs (age 60+) see major threats to various rights.

3. Nativity: Native-born AAPIs are more fearful of a second Trump term than the foreign born, although that may change in the future given the recent executive orders on birthright citizenship and immigration enforcement. We also find that the foreign born are more likely than the native born to favor mass deportations (43% vs 29%), something that may reflect their belief that immigrants should wait in line for their visas, even if it takes many years (or even decades) to do so.
   
4. Ethnicity differences: When looking at the data by ethnicity, we find that Japanese Americans and Indian Americans are among the most fearful of a second Trump term, and that Filipino Americans have the highest levels of Trump favorability (47%) among Asian Americans. On major threats to rights, differences by ethnicity vary according to the threat. Finally, we find that Korean, Chinese, and Filipino Americans show the highest levels of support for mass deportations, even though their levels of support fall below a majority.

These findings show that Asian Americans, by and large, were opposed to major parts of President Trump’s agenda when asked about it in December 2024.

What’s next? Given the rapidly evolving context of federal policy changes, we plan to dig deeper into AAPI policy opinions about immigration, health, crime and health in the coming months. And given the persuadable nature of the AAPI electorate, we also aim to repeat questions on favorability and governance as it pertains Trump presidency and Congress.

Karthick Ramakrishnan is the founder and executive director of AAPI Data