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Donald Trump is poised to start a new trade war within the GOP, and he just might win it.
The former president’s campaign-trail talk of a sweeping tariff on global imports is rattling Republicans in Congress, but the GOP is not exactly vowing to vanquish a proposal that most economists warn would carry serious risks for US consumers. Not to mention that Trump may just go around Congress and unilaterally enact a version of his tariff agenda.
Trump has repeatedly floated a 10% tariff on all imports, as well as a 60% tariff on Chinese goods, while hinting at going even higher if he wins back the White House in November. A protectionist escalation on that scale would splinter Republicans, reopening a painful rupture between old school free-traders and Trump-aligned populists.
Few elected Republicans are praising Trump’s vision of using tariffs to bolster the US dollar and finance his policy plans. That’s because many agree with economists that blunt-force tariffs amount to a tax on consumers and businesses. Trump’s tariff ideas could also take the sting out of their attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris for the Biden administration’s record on inflation.
But congressional Republicans aren’t vowing to block him, partly because of the high threshold to do so and partly out of disinterest in infighting ahead of the election. If Trump wins, they’re signaling a post-election lobbying effort to narrow his proposals to exempt allies, keep prices low and avoid hurting American businesses.
“He likes tariffs. We know that. And he views it as a way of raising revenue. Certainly, some of us have a different sort of view,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 GOP leader who is running for the top job in the next Congress, told Semafor.
Broad tariffs along the lines of Trump’s 10% pitch “would prompt a serious conversation up here,” Thune added.
The mildness of Republicans’ objections to the Trump tariff agenda may only be temporary. GOP resistance to his plans would almost certainly mount if he wins.
“People are panicked about what they’re paying for everyday stuff,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “If it’s the Alaska consumer, I don’t know how I can legitimately ask them to pay more.”
Still, Trump’s party sees a lot to like in his threats of more levies on Chinese imports. Several GOP senators also said Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum were critical to clinching the recent North American trade deal for those goods.
So as much as Republicans would struggle to accept a 10 percent global import tax – “Let’s hope we don’t have to deal with that,” Indiana Sen. Todd Young said – Trump’s staunch allies would exert their own pull. One of those allies, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, said global tariffs could be a negotiating tactic to “bludgeon” other countries into deal-making mode.
In interviews with a dozen GOP senators, the desire to temper rather than extinguish Trump’s tariffs was clear.
“All we have to do is go back [and look at how] our pork industry has suffered famously, if you’re not careful with the way you craft the tariffs,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. “President Trump really does want to impose them. It’s on us to explain: ‘We do too, just not in a blunt force manner.’”
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Six years ago, Republicans rebelled against Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs and cringed at his tariff threats against Mexico. There were even long-shot movements in the party to block both plans.
But GOP leaders skirted a floor fight and instead focused on lobbying Trump administration officials to narrow them. Avoiding that type of confrontation could be tougher if Trump actually goes through with his global tariffs.
“It’s going to be quite a test for them,” said former Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who warned that across-the-board tariffs could cause “Depression-era” unemployment. “Members are going to be very reluctant to stand in the way -- until they start hearing from their constituents who are going to be losing jobs and closing factories.”
Still, the bar is high for Republicans to turn any tariff fight into a check on Trump; they would probably need a two-thirds majority in Congress to override a presidential veto. And several sitting GOP senators are already skeptical that Congress could move fast enough to stop Trump’s tariffs.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said the matter would more likely be litigated in trade courts, while Tillis said he would prefer elected Republicans talk to Trump about their concerns to head them off early.
“It has specific consequences that need to be dealt with if it happens,” Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said of an across-the-board tariff. “I would prefer something that is focused on something that I think is a real issue: China.”
Trump has far more protectionist allies in Congress these days, with several pro-tariff senators replacing more free-trade Democrats and Republicans. Trump’s own running mate JD Vance is emblematic of this shift, having replaced former US trade representative and Sen. Rob Portman in Ohio.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, said that the former president would again seek to simultaneously cut taxes and impose tariffs if he wins in November.
“When President Trump is back in the White House, he will work with both Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate to implement his America First tariff proposals,” Leavitt said. “President Trump’s plan will result in millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars returning home from China to America.”
Republicans in Congress are hoping to extend the costly Trump-era tax cuts for individuals that expire at the end of next year. Tariffs could be used to pay for parts of that extension, though that may be politically difficult.
“It’s terrible economic policy, don’t be confused – but it would solve some of their legislative difficulties,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former George W. Bush administration official who leads the center-right American Action Forum.
“I’m trying to imagine a Republican senator voting for a $3 trillion tax increase” in the form of broad tariffs, he added. “That’s just hard to buy.”
Rather than seek Congress’ approval, Trump might forge ahead on his own and test whether lawmakers would buck him or courts could stop him. However, it’s an open question whether existing law would let him take that path for sweeping tariffs by invoking national security or another justification.
“I don’t think he has that authority,” Toomey said. “Might he decide to try to do it anyway? I think that’s entirely possible.”
Holtz-Eakin said that initially “I thought: ‘there’s no way he can do that without Congress.’ And then serious people who have written briefs on this convinced me that, yeah, he probably could.”
Burgess’s view
I covered the discontent in the GOP over Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs extensively six years ago. It didn’t make the headlines on the nightly news, but it was one of the most tense policy divisions of that time.
At one point, senators even warned that Trump could face the rare veto override by his own party on his Mexico tariffs. Lankford memorably declared that the Trump administration “is trying to use tariffs to solve every problem but HIV and climate change.”
But as Trump shaped the GOP in his own mold, Republicans shifted enough on trade to make his tariffs a trickier fight to pick this time around. Plenty of Democrats are OK with tariffs on China, too, and the Biden administration has kept some of Trump’s first-term tariffs.
Harris blasted what she called “Trump’s sales tax” during this week’s widely viewed debate, but the exchange got little attention. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said there’s more he and fellow Democrats “can do, and will do to educate folks about how damaging [Trump’s tariffs] would be.”
Others aren’t so sure that hardline trade policy can produce the type of blowback that, say, unraveling Obamacare would.
“It’s hard for the public at large to identify specific policy proposals’ impact on their own lives, particularly when they talk about tariffs,” said retiring Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney. “Will it make things more expensive in this country? Yes … It’s not an issue that’s really clear in people’s minds, and therefore hard to focus on.”
Notable
- Some economists say even the notion of Trump’s more punitive tariffs could deter other countries from relying on the US dollar, the New York Times reports.
- Goldman Sachs pointed to Trump’s tariffs in a recent note projecting that his policies would negatively affect the US economy, per CNN.