Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 27
by Dace Potas
On Tuesday, Trump will give his first congressional address of his second administration. As Republicans look to take a victory lap following the first several weeks of the Trump administration, a major concern is looming for them. The speech will come a day after Trump confirmed that 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods would go into effect after a month delay, causing the stock market to drop as a result.
By now, America has heard Trump’s sales pitch on tariffs, and they don’t like it. American consumer sentiment just had its worst month since the peak of Biden-flation. Trump and his allies are scrambling to help his image and how he’s perceived.
The GOP’s messaging is already starting to shift on tariffs as a new attempt to explain away anti-economic policies that will only cause Americans more pain. Trump’s actions are already telling us he wants to double down on tariffs, and voters should be on the lookout for more during the Tuesday speech.
Americans are waking up to the risk of tariffs, so Trump is pivoting
Republicans, as much as they are dominating headlines, have been relatively quiet about the economy compared with the noise they were making on the campaign trail. In part because Trump’s economic plan doesn’t make sense, Republicans seem almost apprehensive about focusing on the only issue that matters to a presidency and voters.
On the campaign trail, Trump told voters that “we’re going to be a tariff nation. It’s not going to be a cost to you, it’s going to be a cost to another country.”
At another campaign stop, he called tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented.’’
As desperate as voters were for change in Washington, the Trump administration is now accountable for its economic principles. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey, just 30% of voters agreed that the United States should raise tariffs on imports even if it raises prices, compared with 47% saying the opposite.
Those capable of reading between the lines knew the Trump administration didn’t believe this nonsense from the start.
Since taking office, Trump has stopped insisting that there won’t be any pain from tariffs. He let this position slip when he said any tariffs would be “worth the price that must be paid.”
Trump’s planned tariffs on Canada included a blanket 25% tax on goods, with a 10% carve-out for oil and other energy sources.
Why would Trump lower tariffs on energy, Canada’s most vital import to the United States, other than for the fear of raising prices on American consumers? The truth is that Trump doesn’t believe his stated position on tariffs and hopes his base is loyal enough not to ask too many questions on the matter.
Trump is wrong: Pain from tariffs won’t be worth it
Even if the theory says tariffs will force an increase in demand for domestically produced goods, what happens when those tariffs go away down the line? The same thing that happens now: Americans outsource production of cheap goods to countries with cheaper labor.
Worse, if the tariffs are never repealed, American consumers will indefinitely pay high prices.
Oddly enough, because Trump is the rare split-term president, we have data from his first term’s tariffs experiment, which did not go well. Researchers have found that Trump’s 2017 tariffs on laundry machines drove American prices up by an average of $90 per unit.
Even if tariffs on industries such as steel did work, Trump’s plan still is to subsidize an industry of 140,000 workers on the backs of 6.5 million workers in steel-consuming industries.
The only justifiable way for Trump to make the pain worth it is to use tariffs as a bargaining chip in negotiations with foreign entities, which makes some sense when dealing with countries we have economic power over, such as Mexico. When it comes to adversaries such as China, however, it only leads to retaliation and pain for citizens of both countries.
Americans have wised up to Trump’s tariffs lies, and the GOP is being forced to pivot its sales pitch due to Americans’ worries on the economy. The best move for congressional Republicans would be to leave the ridiculous, anti-free market policies behind in grace.
They won’t, though, and Americans will suffer.
Author Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
