President 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 trod 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 her state's automobile industry in an interview with journalist Gretchen Carlson shortly after her remarks, arguing the tariffs are not good for autoworkers in Michigan.
"I would argue that all of this uncertainty is going to cost everyone 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 the social platform 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 conflating the debate over Trump’s tariffs with the free trade versus fair trade debate seen in ...
