(The Hill) — President Donald Trump’s tariffs are putting Democrats in a challenging political position as they decide how strongly to denounce his trade policy.
Democrats have pounced on Trump’s tariffs in recent weeks as only boosting prices for consumers and causing international chaos, but much of the labor movement, a key part of the party’s coalition, supports tariffs to some extent to protect their industries from foreign competition.
Reflecting this reality, some Democrats in key battleground states — including, most recently, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) — have treaded more carefully on the issue, underscoring the divisions in the party.
One of those divisions appeared to come to light on Thursday when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) criticized Whitmer’s comments from a speech she made in Washington earlier that week. In her remarks, Whitmer said she understood “the motivation behind the tariffs” and that she is “not against tariffs outright,” but warned against Trump’s strategy.
“You can’t just bust out the tariff hammer to swing at every problem without a clearly defined end goal,” she said.
Whitmer expressed concern for the state’s automobile industry in an interview with journalist Gretchen Carlson shortly after her remarks, arguing the tariffs are not good for auto workers in Michigan.
“I would argue that all of this uncertainty is going to cost every one of us but especially autoworkers,” she said. “I think we’re already seeing the immediate impact. The longer term, it could be a lot worse.”
Polis shot back in a post on X, writing that “the ‘tariff hammer’ winds up hitting your own hand rather than the nail.”
“Tariffs are bad outright because they lead to higher prices and destroy American manufacturing,” he said.
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), who represents a Pittsburgh area district along the country’s Rust Belt, also received some backlash last month for arguing that Democrats need to rethink their “anti-tariff absolutism.” He noted that he’s a Democrat from the Rust Belt and argued that “lousy trade deals like NAFTA stripped us for parts.”
In an interview with The Washington Post on Friday, Deluzio called Trump’s approach “chaotic and wrong and missed the mark.”
“The thing that has been missing from this administration’s approach has been any sense of strategy,” Deluzio said, adding that “throwing tariffs alone on friends and foe alike is not going to work.”
Rep. Derek Tran (D-Calif.), who represents a competitive district, echoed this sentiment during a CNN town hall on Thursday.
“I believe that tariffs can be a good thing that we can use to balance trade but when we’re seeing tariffs used haphazardly, recklessly, and causing our market to free fall, that’s an issue for me,” Tran said.
On the more progressive end of the party spectrum, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has been a longtime critic of free trade deals’ effects on outsourcing American jobs, also suggested targeted tariffs can be useful.
“They can help level the playing field for American autoworkers or steelworkers to compete fairly against companies who have moved production to countries where they can pay starvation wages,” he said in a release. “But Trump’s chaotic across-the-board tariffs are not the way to do it.”
Many Democrats warn against equivocating the debate over Trump’s tariffs with the free trade vs. fair trade debate seen in the 1990s and 2000s.
“Remember we scratch our head and wonder why we disconnect from the middle class? Because we want to give them a history lesson and not a reality lesson,” said TJ Rooney, former chair of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party.
“We have to talk about the fact that this is a one-man trainwreck and their partners in Congress, the Republicans, are going about it hand-in-hand, part and parcel, hip to leg with an agenda of a man who’s seemingly intent on driving our economy and our democracy into a ditch,” he continued.
“That’s what the governor and all of our other thoughtful political pointed heads should be talking about, not quibbling about whether or not tariffs are appropriate under the right circumstances. So are no olives in martinis under the right circumstances, but that’s not the point.”
Since the start of his first term in office and through the 2024 campaign, one of Trump’s political strengths had consistently been the economy. Voters regularly gave him their highest marks for his handling of it, along with immigration, even if they viewed him unfavorably for other reasons.
But Trump’s approval rating has begun showing signs of dropping overall and particularly concerning the economy and inflation as he’s imposed tariffs around the world. Even as he instituted a 90-day delay on most of the widest-ranging tariffs that were set to go into effect, a 10-percent tariff is still in place as a baseline throughout the world and a 145-percent tariff is in place on imports from China, one of the country’s largest trading partners.
That could hand Democrats a political gift, but some have taken different approaches in how they address the tariffs to the country.
Michigan Democratic strategist Adrian Hemond said the party’s politicians should take cues from what those who typically vote for the party believe, with polls showing the tariffs are solidly unpopular among them.
“That’s going to be the thing to watch now, not what the leadership, such as it is of the Democratic Party, is saying right now, because the messaging is all over the map from elected officials,” he said. “The thing to watch is, what do people who typically vote for Democrats think about this, and right now, the reviews are really f’ing bad.”
An internal poll from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Data for Progress found 83 percent of Democrats think Trump’s tariffs will “hurt” Americans.” Another eight percent believe the tariffs would “help” Americans, while nine percent said they did not know.
A separate CBS News poll released on Sunday showed 85 percent of Republicans said they believed Trump’s tariffs will add manufacturing jobs. Forty-two percent of Democrats said they believed the tariffs would result in the loss of manufacturing jobs, while 20 percent of Democrats said they believe jobs will be added.
One complicating factor for Democrats addressing tariffs is the support they have received from some of the most prominent labor unions in the country.
Organized labor has traditionally been a key part of the Democratic base, though the party has struggled more with blue-collar workers during the Trump era. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien told The Boston Herald that he’s frustrated with Democrats who have “lost the working class,” saying the party is different from the one he grew up in.
O’Brien argued that the tariffs are worth the temporary pain if they ultimately bring “good-paying, middle-class jobs.”
Shawn Fain, the president of United Auto Workers, welcomed Trump’s move to impose tariffs on auto parts, calling them a “tool in the toolbox,” though he said Trump’s universal tariffs were “reckless.”
But Hemond pointed to polls showing union households remain widely opposed to tariffs.
A survey from the Democratic group Navigator Research found 65 percent of respondents in union households have an unfavorable view of tariffs, higher than those from non-union households. The poll showed a steady decline in support over the past few months.
Democratic strategist Clay Middleton said the party needs to work to remind voters consistently of the “pain” they’re feeling because of Trump’s policies. He said the messaging needs to be straightforward that consumers will pay more with tariffs in place.
“I get people want to pontificate and posture… but I still believe you got to call a spade a spade,” Middleton said. “When you are going to charge someone more money to bring a product to this country to go into stores, that cost is going to be passed on to the consumer. That’s tariffs.”
