President Donald Trump is asking the Americans a huge faith and patience as he begins an economic tariff game. The duties, which came into force overnight, have shocked the Stock Exchange and could soon raise prices for many goods paid by Americans – after years of persistent inflation.

And Trump had a message Tuesday night for those who doubt, including an increasing number of allies.

“I know what the hell is doing. I know what I am doing, “Trump said in a fundraiser for the Republican Campaign of the House of Representatives. “And you know what I’m doing, too. That’s why you vote for me. “

But it is not so clear that the American people have this kind of faith – or they know exactly why Trump is doing this.

A new poll shows that Americans generally do not really respond to Trump’s excuses for duties. This does not mean that a significant part of them will not provide him with any room, but suggests that they do not really see the meaning of this exercise.

And that means that their patience could be exhausted quite quickly.

While Trump’s duties were created as “reciprocal” – basically impose taxes on imports of other countries with those who charge for imports from the United States – in fact it did not apply. On the contrary, the White House seems to have based the duties on something completely another: US trade deficits with other countries. Trump imposed at least 10%duties on all countries, but the rates were higher than US trade deficits with them.

A commercial deficit basically means that the US is importing more than the other country they export to it.

Trump has repeatedly argued that these commercial deficits exist because some countries are killing the US. Critics and many economists see this formula as overly simplistic and note that the reason the United States has commercial deficits with countries such as Southeast Asia is because they can produce much cheaper goods. Sometimes, other countries have mere goods that the United States does not have.

And the Americans seem to disagree in their vast majority with Trump that commercial deficits are inherently bad.

A Yougov poll held mainly after the announcement of Trump’s duties asked if the trade deficit with another country “necessarily means that trade with this country is unfair to the US” – which is Trump’s main argument.

The Americans disagreed with it with a big difference: 57% versus 22%. Even Trump’s voters were almost evenly separated.

A Pew Research Center poll conducted in late last month showed something similar. To the question who benefited more than US trade with China, Canada and Mexico, the first three countries that Trump targeted with his duties that was a major target. With the US just 29% said the same about Mexico and 26% for Canada. Half or most Americans said the relationships were at least as beneficial.

And maybe nothing so far has shown how Americans feel about the result of yet another Yougov poll.

The economy has almost always been Trump’s best issue in his first term and has created the reputation of a successful entrepreneur. However, the poll found that the Americans said with a double -digit rate that Trump had been pressing on tariffs because “misunderstood trade”. Half said that he was at least a secondary reason for Trump’s duties. Even a quarter of Trump’s voters agreed.

Only 38% of Americans disagreed with it. In other words, relatively few Americans seem to be sure that Trump knows what he is doing.

This does not mean that there is no sympathy for the underlying argument that Trump puts forward.

A Reuters-Pisos poll published on Tuesday showed that Americans are in favor of the idea that other countries are exploiting the United States with their commercial practices, with 52% against 44%. But this question made no mention of commercial deficits. And the support of this belief was not so strong. Only 27% agreed “strongly” that the US is exploiting other countries.

This explains why the support for Trump’s duties as a whole is so silent. While the majority of Americans in the Reuters -Sipsos poll said that other countries are exploiting the US – at least to some extent – and 27% felt “strongly” so, only 14% strongly supported the Trump recipe: the few 10% duties in almost all other countries. And only 13% strongly supported the 25% duties in all imported cars.

This was a thread running in other polls. Trump’s supporters seem to be willing to give him some space, but the support is not so deep. Whatever the problem there is, few people seem to believe that this is the right solution.

And if you look more closely, they don’t seem to believe that Trump has even pointed out what they consider to be the right problem.

All this is a recipe for a clear lack of faith at a time when Trump really needs it. In order for duty game to work, people must be willing to withstand weeks or even months of price rise and other difficulties, including their investments, before the benefits begin. How many people are they willing to do this if they don’t even believe that trade deficits are a big problem?

At the moment, this faith is clearly not existing.