It’s dawning on the world — and some Republicans on Capitol Hill — that sometimes President Donald Trump should be taken literally after all.
Trump levied sweeping tariffs on key trading partners Mexico, Canada and China early Tuesday morning, sparking retaliation from Beijing and Ottawa, sending the stock market into a tailspin, and alarming government officials around the globe as they brace for potentially the worst trade war in a century.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blasted the United States for launching “a trade war against Canada” while “they’re talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin — a lying, murderous dictator.” Target CEO Brian Cornell warned that Americans’ grocery prices would go up. John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said that car prices would spike as much as 25 percent. The Dow industrials, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite slumped.
And even local businesses are warning of the effects. Anderson Warlick, the CEO of Parkdale Mills, a yarn manufacturer in North Carolina, told a crowd outside the Capitol that it would be only weeks before he has to start furloughing his workers.
Trump’s announcement took place hours before he was scheduled to give his first joint address to Congress in his second term, setting the stage for a dramatic spectacle at the Capitol and cementing the fact that the president has swiftly reordered the world in the six short weeks since he took office.
The threat of Trump’s tariffs pushing up prices is even causing some Republicans to sound alarms.
In an interview, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said there is “a place for tariffs” when used “selectively and in a targeted way,” but warned that such levies can have unintended effects.
“I’m hoping they’re a means to an end and not an end itself. I think they’re hopefully temporary, designed to achieve a specific result,” said Thune, who hails from an agricultural-dependent state that was hard hit by retaliatory tariffs during Trump’s trade war with China in 2018. “I’m, you know, coming from an agricultural state. I see the tariff issue through a different lens. Nothing happens in a vacuum. There’s always reactions to actions that are taken.”
GOP lawmakers from states with large agricultural industries said they were “uneasy” and “concerned” about the 25 percent tariffs Trump slapped on Canada and Mexico.
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), a member of the House’s Agriculture Committee, expressed concern about the impact of Trump’s levies on companies that do business with America’s immediate neighbors to the north and south. He said he has spoken with the White House legislative team about the tariffs.
“It would be very difficult to make farmers completely whole,” he said. “You got some work to do there in order to make that better.”
Trump’s moves come at a politically perilous moment for Republicans. Even before his levies, a backlash has been brewing over his efforts with billionaire adviser Elon Musk to slash the federal government. On Tuesday, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the head of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, told GOP lawmakers in a private meeting to stop holding in-person town halls after protesters disrupted meetings with lawmakers around the country.
A recent CBS/YouGov poll found that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation, which was widely seen among both Democrats and Republicans as a top reason for his victory in last year’s presidential election.
Trump’s levies, which went into effect just after midnight, put an end to weeks of will-he-or-won’t-he speculation in state and world capitals, where many believed that the president was only bluffing in hopes of reaching a deal with other countries. Even some of Trump’s allies were taken aback by the announcement.
A former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation, said they were caught off guard, thinking the president would grant Canada and Mexico an extension. The former official read it as part of a broader geopolitical realignment on the heels of the Friday blow-up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“It’s a lot to digest,” the person said. “Some things that have been fairly known knowns for a long time are now uncertain.”
The former official added that the tariffs taking effect the day of the joint address “seems fairly predetermined” and it appears that there’s nothing Canada or Mexico could have done to stave them off.
But in interviews on Tuesday, most GOP lawmakers stood by Trump’s decision to implement tariffs.
As a party, Republicans have largely sought to treat the tariffs as part of a broader financial strategy, one that will reshape the economy with lower energy prices, lower taxes and an influx of domestic investment. They defended Trump’s levies as an effort to bring back jobs to America after they have streamed overseas for decades and painted the president as a savvy businessman restoring fairness to the United States after the nation has long been taken advantage of.
“He is the greatest disruptor I’ve ever seen. He gets people to think in an altogether different vein than they were thinking before,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.). “Whatever it takes to get what we need to get so that America’s on the level playing field, I’m fine. I just hate like hell to watch us give up market share year after year.”
As for the potential pain that tariffs could cause, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said farmers would be willing to weather the fallout.
“They’re getting ripped off too on energy costs, they’re getting ripped off on their input costs,” he said. “It remains to be seen what actually is implemented and what is negotiation. But I think when you look at the entire economic agenda together, it will reduce costs.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said he knew from being on the campaign trail recently that voters are frustrated with inflation. But he wasn’t concerned that the tariffs would cause higher prices and instead pinned the blame on the budget deficit and Federal Reserve, adding that balancing the budget would help lower costs.
“Mexico, in particular, is dumping on Florida produce. They’ve been dumping on our tomato industry. They’ve been dumping on our blueberry industry,” he said. “And I think we’ve got to start holding countries that aren’t doing the right thing accountable.”
Meanwhile, Democrats, who have been unsure of how to move forward after a devastating loss in November, sensed an opening. At a press conference in Washington on Tuesday, they sought to capitalize on Trump’s trade moves, arguing that his tariffs would hurt the economy.
“You can’t get into a trade war with every single country expecting that you’re going to come out of that stronger,” said Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the Ways and Means subcommittee on trade. “If one country has a trade war with the United States, they’re dealing with one country. But to try to go to trade war with multiple countries is only going to raise costs for consumers in this country.”
Nick Taylor-Vaisey and Jordan Wolman contributed to this report.
