Donald Trump’s embrace of tariffs helped propel him to a stunning electoral victory in 2016.
A decade later, in 2026, that same trade agenda could instead drag Republicans down in the midterm elections.
The reversal is one of the most unexpected developments of Trump’s second term—and a particularly damaging one for both the president and his party.
As Trump rose to prominence in 2015 and 2016, he seized on issues that exposed a widening gap between public sentiment and elite opinion. Trade was among the most politically potent.
His protectionist message, delivered in blunt and often scathing language, carried him onto traditionally Democratic ground. It resonated with working-class voters and helped him break through the Democrats’ longstanding “Blue Wall” in the industrial states.
From a purely political standpoint, it seemed difficult to see what could go wrong.
The answer was: nothing—at least until Trump actually secured the power to put his trade promises into practice.
“Liberation Day,” it now appears, marked the start of the collapse in meaningful public support for his tariff strategy.
The conventional political logic of tariffs has generally favored protectionism. The gains are concentrated and highly visible, benefiting industries and companies with a powerful incentive to defend them, while the costs are spread across a much larger population that may not feel strongly enough to object.
This time, however, that calculation has been reversed. The burden landing on consumers and others with no direct interest in protectionism is eroding support for the tariffs as a whole.
Trump also entered his second term promising to bring prices down. Tariffs work in the opposite direction by raising the cost of imported goods.
The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the policy could cost households roughly $1,000 per year.
The tariffs’ chaotic, unpredictable rollout—and the questionable legal foundation cited for many of them—has only deepened the political damage.
In a poll conducted by the libertarian Cato Institute and Morning Consult, 74% of Americans said tariffs had increased the prices they pay. That view was shared by 66% of Republicans.
More than half of respondents, 53%, said the tariffs had weakened the economy, while 49% said the measures had harmed their quality of life.
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Following the latest trade dispute with Canada, a Politico/Public First poll found that 56% of Americans considered the tariffs on the country’s northern neighbor “wrong.”
A CBS/YouGov survey showed an even broader political disadvantage: Voters preferred a candidate who opposed Trump’s tariffs over one who backed them by 26 percentage points.
Democratic Senate candidates are now pledging to repeal Trump’s tariffs, and even Sherrod Brown, a longtime protectionist, has voiced opposition to them.
Republican candidates in states heavily dependent on trade with Canada have also broken ranks, criticizing the administration’s escalating conflict with its “Friendly Neighbor to the North.”
That puts the Midwest in an especially precarious position for Republicans heading into the midterms—and the reasons are not difficult to understand.
China cut its purchases of US farm products in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs, and the farm sector has been slammed.
Exports of wheat, cotton, beef and pork to China plummeted last year, and overall agricultural exports to China fell by 66%.
Layer on top of this the price of diesel fuel jumping 80% and fertilizer increasing 15% due to the Iran war, and it’s a formula for outright revolt.
The tariffs have led to a tangle a little more than a month before Election Day.
Trying to address complaints about high grocery prices, the administration wants to relent on beef tariffs to help consumers, but farmers — hurt by other tariffs — are balking at a measure that will reduce prices at a time when they are struggling.
One way or other, someone is going to be unhappy.
Even if Trump’s theory of the tariffs is correct — that higher import duties will lead to re-industrialization — the policy involves immediate disruption and increased costs in exchange for a protectionism-driven build-out that will take years to be fully achieved.
Long before then — indeed, by January — an opposition congressional majority hostile to the president and his tariffs may be entrenched in Washington.
In politics, it’s often “careful what you wish for.”
Especially if that involves imposing higher prices on an inflation-fatigued public.
X: @RichLowry
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