Former President Donald Trump calls himself a “tariff guy” and says taxes on imported goods “are the best thing ever invented,” so it’s no surprise that Vice President Kamala Harris attacked the centerpiece of the GOP nominee’s economic agenda as bad policy.
What’s more surprising, however, is that a House Democrat was just introduced an account to codify Trump’s 10% overall tariffs, revealing how the long-dormant trade policy is dividing both parties.
Tariffs can be traced back to ancient Athens and other historical civilizations and were the main source of income for the federal government until 1914, when the income tax replaced them. But they largely fell out of favor in the late 20th century as the US led a global free trade revolution.
Breaking down trade barriers has lowered the cost of consumer goods and grown many economies around the world. But critics say unrestricted free trade also decimated American manufacturing and the well-paying, often unionized, jobs that came with it, as domestic factories were unable to compete with the lower costs of making things abroad.
“Other countries are finally going to pay us, after 75 years, for everything we’ve done for the world, and the tariff is going to be significant,” Trump said this week.
Rep. Jared Golden, an unorthodox moderate Democrat from Maine who faces a tough re-election this year, introduced the bill on Wednesday aimed at promoting domestic manufacturing and reducing US dependence on foreign goods.
“While it’s undoubtedly true that President Trump is the first in my lifetime to lead on tariffs, he’s not the first to think about it,” Golden said in an interview. “Our Founders understood in the early years of the nation that we must avoid becoming a nation of consumers of foreign goods because it creates dependency.”
Harris and her campaign criticized Trump’s idea of blanket tariffs, saying they would raise prices for consumers already struggling with record high costs due to inflation.
“It would be a sales tax on the American people,” he said in one interview with MSNBC on Wednesday. “You don’t just throw the idea of tariffs across the board, and that’s part of the problem with Donald Trump … He’s just not very serious about how he thinks about some of these issues.”
Trump’s tariff plan has its critics on its side.
Liberal Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a bill this month to bar any president from raising tariffs without first getting Congress to sign off — a clear shot at Trump, who has said he will implement his tariff policy only through executive action. (Trump was able to raise tariffs during his first term without congressional approval.)
Despite Harris and other attacks on Trump’s tariffs, the Biden-Harris administration decided to keep some of the invoices Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum during his first term and even raised tariffs on strategic sectors such as electric vehicles and semiconductors.
Harris did not refer to those tariffs when asked about them in the MSNBC interview.
Still, Biden and Harris have consistently criticized blanket tariffs as “indiscriminateThe media risk “undermining our alliances,” arguing that targeted sanctions do not carry inflationary risks of a wider spread.
Gold, like some others who favor tariffs, says a blanket tariff would be good for American workers and national security, regardless of whether Trump supports the idea or not.
While Trump doesn’t, Golden acknowledges that tariffs would raise prices on imported goods, but says those higher costs would make domestically produced goods more competitive and put upward pressure on quality, since imported goods wouldn’t they could now compete only on price.
“It made sense after World War II to pursue globalization because we were one of the last industrialized economies left standing,” Golden said. “That model no longer applies today.”
Economists are general much more negative regarding invoices. Most people say it the facts are clear that free trade leads to greater economic growth, and they say Trump’s blanket tariffs will increase inflation and it can cost jobs.
Politically, however, tariffs seem quite popular, with recent Reuters/Ipsos poll finding that 56% of Americans support the idea, and that number is likely to be even higher in a Trump-leaning area like Golden’s, which, like many others, has closed a number of factories over the past 40 years.
