As Democrats push back against the policies of the second Trump administration, they are struggling to convey a clear stance on tariffs, with many walking a political tightrope amid the rapid shifts in President Trump’s trade agenda.
While most Democrats have criticized Mr. Trump’s on-again, off-again approach as “chaotic” and “reckless,” they have displayed little consensus about embracing tariffs themselves as a policy tool.
Their divisions were on display on Sunday morning, as Democratic lawmakers were grilled by talk show hosts about whether their party was taking the right approach by objecting to Mr. Trump’s tariffs while embracing tariffs in principle as a policy tool.
When pressed by NBC’s Kristen Welker, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, denounced Mr. Trump’s trade strategy but declined to weigh in on whether he thought others in his party were taking the right approach by offering a more nuanced criticism. Ms. Welker pointed out that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had maintained and even expanded some of the tariffs that Mr. Trump enacted in his first term, a move that some progressive Democrats had applauded at the time.
“I just want to, for myself, tell you a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation of the Trump tariffs,” Mr. Booker said, blaming the trade barriers for roiling the economy and tanking Americans’ savings. “It is all just wrong. It should be condemned.”
A few Democrats have even aligned themselves with Mr. Trump’s tariffs. Representative Jared Golden of Maine, a Democrat who has consistently won re-election in a Trump-won district, has embraced a 10 percent blanket tariff on imports and twice introduced a bill that would codify such levies.
And last week Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan broke from others in her party by saying she understood the “motivation” behind Mr. Trump’s tariffs and agreed with him that “we do need to make more stuff in America.”
When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether there was room for nuanced conversation or if comments like Ms. Whitmer’s were “a mistake,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sidestepped the question. Instead, she said it was a mistake for Congress to allow Mr. Trump to continue using the “red light, green light” strategy of enacting then revoking tariffs.
“Tariffs can be an important tool in the toolbox when used in targeted ways. But right now, what we’ve got is chaos and corruption,” Ms. Warren said. “Congress has a job right now, and that is to step up and take this authority away from Donald Trump.”
While party leaders insist that Democrats are unified, their muddled opposition has angered some in the Democratic base. House Democrats came under fire this month after the caucus posted a video on X in which Representative Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania defended tariffs as part of a larger strategy to combat “a wrong-for-decades consensus in Washington on free trade.”
“We as Democrats must speak out forcefully against Trump’s weaponization of tariffs to wreak havoc on the American economy,” wrote Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, in response to the video. “Muddled milquetoast messaging only emboldens Trump’s madness.”
For now, House leadership appears to have settled on bashing Mr. Trump’s tariff strategy while leaving the door open to using such tools in a more strategic way in the future.
When asked last week whether Democrats, if they were in control of the House, would repeal Mr. Trump’s tariffs completely, the minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, said that his party would use “every legislative tool available” to protect American consumers and workers from “economic harm.”
“Tariffs, when properly utilized, have a role to play in trying to make sure that you have a competitive environment for our workers and our businesses,” Mr. Jeffries said. “That’s not what’s going on right now. This is a reckless economic sledgehammer that Donald Trump and compliant Republicans in the Congress are taking to the economy, and the American people are being hurt enough.”
