The Scene
After the president’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, the voice of the Democratic response was Pennsylvania Rep. Chris Deluzio. The Iraq War veteran and attorney from the Pittsburgh area cut a video for House Democrats, which started not with a condemnation of Trump, but of the “wrong-for-decades consensus” that preceded him.
The video frustrated many liberals, who wanted to see the party come out hard against Trump and own the tariff issue. But Deluzio saw a need for nuance, a party that didn’t just have one position, and a Trump move that wouldn’t do what its advocates wanted. Some labor unions were cheering Trump on, and even the chair of the House Democrats’ campaign committee didn’t think the party was going to coalesce around a pure anti-tariff stance.
“It’s not about any particular tariff,” Washington Rep. Suzan DelBene told Semafor’s Eleanor Mueller. “It’s just the kind of uncertainty of what will or won’t happen, and how much change there will be.”
On Wednesday, shortly before Trump reversed himself on many of the tariffs, I sat down with Deluzio to understand what he was advising, and figure out if the party would actually cohere around a position — probably one more complicated than “orange man bad.” This is an edited transcript of the conversation.
The View From Chris Deluzio
David Weigel: What were you hearing in your district after “Liberation Day?”
Chris Deluzio: The reaction has been pretty aligned with where I am. What the president’s doing is reckless and dangerous, really hurting people. And we also know we have to get trade and manufacturing right. What he’s doing isn’t it. The fact that you can hear from a guy like me, who’s from the Rust Belt, in steel country, and knows we have to make more in this country, that what the president just did is crazy and dangerous? It tells you something about how out there he’s been.
So, how would a president with a sound strategy use those tools differently last week?
You’ve got to have an industrial policy to incentivize American manufacturing, especially when we’re competing with countries that are propping up their industries, that are subsidizing them in real ways. Chinese steel is the obvious one that comes to mind for me. The CHIPS Act was a big example of this. The Inflation Reduction Act had some of that as well. You’ve got to have investments in our workforce, and you’ve got to have, I think, a broader trade approach. Renegotiating the USMCA, slapping tariffs on Mexico, are not going to change the fact that they undercut American workers. Tariffs won’t fix that. When you look at what the president just did, which is blanket, across the board, foe and ally alike — it’s reckless.
How close was the Biden administration to the right strategy?
There were movements in the right direction. Trade enforcement is part of it, and incentivizing the production here. We don’t have factories humming at the drop of a hat.
If there’s any leverage point for Democrats this year, in a must-pass bill, should they be returning some of the tariff power from the president to Congress?
I think the Congress, across parties and presidencies, has given up too much power to the executive branch. Around war making — I’m a guy who thinks that allowing the president, whomever it is, to rely on the post-9/11 authorization for the use of military force for everything they want to do is an affront to our constitutional order. I’d also like to see the Congress take back more power from the executive, and I think President Trump’s reckless use of the powers of his office highlight why we should be doing that.
What about ending the state of emergency he’s declared?
I think there’s a role for Congress to assert ourselves here. What he’s doing is dangerous, and the Congress should be inserting itself more.
What would be the risk for Democrats, if they just said: Look, we are against tariffs? We’re for ending everything Trump did. Politically, and for Pennsylvanians, what would happen?
How does that play out? You’re not going to invest in, or you don’t care about, American manufacturing? That’s crazy to me. I don’t think that’s where the Democratic Party is. Again, I think you saw that in the Biden administration: House and Senate Democrats being willing to work together on industrial policy like the CHIPS Act. That’s what’s missing from Trump’s crazy tariff-only policy.
Is there a risk that the way Trump is pursuing this could discredit tariffs as a tool, period?
I mean: He is abusing a tool in a really egregious way. Of course, some folks will think the tool is terrible on its own. This thing alone is not going to accomplish the goal that I think all Democrats want, which is good, solid jobs and a good way of life in this country.
Back home, are you hearing from any voters who do support what Trump is doing, if even in a ham-handed way?
Look, I spent some time this past weekend talking to some folks in labor, and I think even there, there is just a pretty broad recognition of this as reckless and crazy. The other part of this is the CEO crowd. It’s been pretty friendly to the president. What those guys are saying is: How the heck are we supposed to plan around this? Even if we want to invest in a factory in America, we’ve got trade rules and tariff levels changing day to day, week to week. You need business certainty to make decisions about investments and where you place them. I think even the fact that that crowd is willing to talk about the disruption coming from this White House on trade, it tells you something.
In no world would I ever be willing to hurt my people, and cause people real economic harm and pain, to try to have another country negotiate. Just go to the negotiating table! You don’t hurt the American people to do it.
Well, let’s imagine you could go back in time — let’s say after NAFTA, before PNTR with China — and put tariffs like these in place. How would western Pennsylvania be different today?
The first kick for us was really foreign trade with Japan, before NAFTA. There was also the movement to ship work to the South, in right-to-work states, so they could undercut worker pay in a place like Pennsylvania, where we had the protections of the union. We saw a lack of investment in our steel industry, in the old blast furnaces, which we still have. Our country gave up a lot of leadership on steel. The AK Valley in my district used to be a manufacturing powerhouse. Trade ravaged a lot of those jobs.
So it wasn’t just one thing that could have been fixed. It’s sector by sector. I’m not interested in killing American jobs and industry, and we aren’t competing fairly, and I think our government needs to reflect that. What Trump is doing does not achieve that.