Republican Lawmakers Fail to Accept Popularity of Trump’s Tariffs Among GOP Voters, Conservatives

Republican lawmakers are sticking to their globalist free trade agenda and opposing President Trump’s “America First” tariffs despite the popularity the tariffs have with GOP voters and conservatives.

Trump, most recently, has put protective tariffs on imported goods and materials such as steel, aluminum, washing machines, Canadian lumber, electronics from China, and solar panels in an effort to boost American industries and protect American workers’ jobs.

In the latest Harvard/Harris Poll, 83 percent of Republican voters say they support tariffs on imported products like automobiles and electronics. Additionally, 81 percent of conservatives said they too supported tariffs, along with 61 percent of Americans living in rural communities.

Lawmakers in the Republican Party, though, have continued their fight against Trump’s tariffs despite their constituents supporting the fair trade initiative.

In interviews with Politico, a number of Republican Senators said they wanted to not only oppose Trump’s tariffs, but that they were looking to plot a plan on how to fight the populist president’s trade agenda.

The Senators told Politico:

“I’d like to kill ’em,” groused Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a close Trump ally, referring to the administration’s expanding list of tariffs.

…

“Individual senators have met with the president, including me. The Ag committee met with him, the Finance Committee met with him. And there’s nobody for this,” said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the Agriculture Committee chairman. Trump is “a protectionist who has his policy wrapped around the rear axle of a pickup. And it’s hard to get out.”

The Republican Senators are continuing to align themselves with their big business donors in the Chamber of Commerce with their promotion of globalist trade negotiations.

Even when GOP voters and conservatives are told that Trump’s tariffs may lead to higher consumer prices, the vast majority continue to support the fair trade agenda. Nearly 75 percent of Republicans said they’d still support the tariffs amid higher prices, and 70 percent of conservatives said the same.

For decades, the Republican Party and Democrats have been largely aligned on promoting job-killing multinational free trade deals like NAFTA and KORUS, both of which aided in opening up overseas markets for multinational companies to outsource their American manufacturing jobs to countries like Mexico, leaving millions of Americans laid off in the process.

If Trump had not immediately stopped the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement when he took office, economists estimated that not only would the elimination of millions of American jobs have occurred, but U.S. wages would have been further depleted.

American workers have repeatedly praised Trump’s tariffs and thanked him personally for ending the promotion of multinational free trade by the U.S.