Republican lawmakers are seriously worried about President Donald Trump’s far-reaching and market-rattling plan to impose tariffs between 10 and 50 percent on all U.S. imports.
Amid a bloodbath on Wall Street, GOP members of Congress worried the cost increases levied on many goods could come back to bite them in future races.
Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., historically one of President Trump’s biggest enablers despite the animosity between them, called the scheme a “tax on everyday working Americans” on Thursday.
“As I have always warned, tariffs are bad policy, and trade wars with our partners hurt working people most,” McConnell said on social media. “Goods made in America will be more expensive to manufacture and, ultimately, for consumers to purchase, with higher broad-based tariffs. At a time when Americans are tightening their belts, we would do well to avoid policies that heap on the pain.”
McConnell, one of four GOP Senators to join with Democrats to vote against tariffs on Canada earlier this week, also worried that tariffs on American allies would hurt the country’s interests, adding that “the last thing we need is to pick fights with the very friends with whom we should be working with to protect against China’s predatory and unfair trade practices.”
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., agreed, saying his constituents favor a more targeted, gradual approach to balancing trade.
“The idea of a tariff to equal the stage has some merit and some support. But I think most Kansans would say, ‘let’s do this in a more gradual way,’” Moran told The Hill. “Most Kansans, including agriculture, which is so affected, I think they were expecting something less dramatic.”
Kansas farmers and Wall Street traders alike seemed to be spooked by the massive and seemingly arbitrary list of tariff rates revealed Tuesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average experiencing its largest one-day drop since March 2020 the next day.
Beyond the stock market shock, public opinion is souring on what former Vice President Mike Pence called the “largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history” in a Wednesday post to X.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this week found that 53% of Americans believed tariffs would do more harm than good, with seven in 10 acknowledging the duties would hike prices domestically.
“Liberation Day,” which plunged the Nasdaq by 6% on Thursday, has been met with bipartisan condemnation. Some Republicans are even trying to take the power to put duties on trade back from the executive branch. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced a bipartisan bill on Thursday to put some guardrails on Trump’s ability to levy tariffs, including requiring the president to get Congressional approval within 60 days on new tariffs.
Even Republicans who aren’t quite ready to restrain Trump’s tariff power are admitting that he may have taken it too far. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. – who voted down the measure on reversing Canada duties – told CNN that the president’s calculation that tariffs would shift manufacturing back in the long run wasn’t a safe bet.
“In the long run, he’s right. But in the long run, we’re all dead,” Kennedy told Newsmax on Wednesday. “Nobody knows the impact of these tariffs. We’re just going to have to wait and see.”
And inside the Trump White House, nobody can seem to get the story straight. As the Washington Post’s Jeff Stein flagged on Thursday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Counsellor to the President Peter Navarro and Trump himself gave three contradictory answers in just a few hours on Thursday on whether the manufactured trade war was a ploy for leverage or a bid to liberate America from foreign trade forever.
All within a few hours –> Howard Lutnick: “I don’t think there’s any chance Trump is going to back off his tariff” Peter Navarro: “This is not a negotiation” Donald Trump: “The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have.”
— Jeff Stein (@jeffstein.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 5:46 PM
That uncertainty is giving even the most loyal MAGA-worlders on Capitol Hill some pause. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow on Thursday that “high tariffs in perpetuity” could spell disaster.
“If the result is our trading partners jack up their tariffs… I don’t think that would be good economic policy. I am not a fan of tariffs,” Cruz told Kudlow. “Tariffs are a tax on consumers, and I’m not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers. So my hope is that these tariffs are short-lived.”
Still, as Democrats attempt to force votes in each chamber to review the emergency declarations the Trump administration issued on Tuesday to gain authority to impose the tariffs, few Republicans have signaled whether they are ready to openly defy President Trump’s tariff plan.
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