House Dem Signals Support For Tariff Plan
Now here’s a twist even a seasoned political observer might not have seen coming: one of President Trump’s loudest defenders on tariffs isn’t a Republican firebrand — it’s Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine. And he’s not whispering his support from the shadows. He’s marching right up to the line and waving the tariff flag higher than many in the GOP.
Let’s be clear: Golden represents a district that Trump carried by nine points in 2024, and unlike his more metropolitan Democratic colleagues, he’s tuned into working-class voters who don’t spend their days obsessing over stock market volatility or Davos cocktail receptions. His message? Trump’s tariffs are overdue — and necessary — and any retreat from them would be a mistake.
While Democrats in D.C. have bent over backward to protect the globalist trade order — the same one that sent America’s factories to foreign shores and gutted industrial towns from Pennsylvania to Maine — Golden is pointing out the obvious. This is the same party that used to rail against NAFTA, the WTO, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
President Trump has introduced a number of new tariff policies, and I and my team are already digging into the details. I’ll have more to say on the specifics in the next few days.
What I can say now is I’m pleased the president is building his tariff agenda on the foundation of…
— Congressman Jared Golden (@RepGolden) April 2, 2025
And now? Golden says they’ve done a “180 degree flip” because Trump had the nerve to do what they always talked about doing. “Tariffs are a first step in rewriting a rigged trade system,” he said. “But they cannot be the last one.”
That’s not empty rhetoric. That’s a challenge to a bipartisan trade orthodoxy that’s sold out American workers in the name of cheap imports and boardroom bonuses.
Meanwhile, inside the Republican tent, infighting is heating up. Some old-guard GOP senators — including Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and even Thom Tillis — are trying to claw back authority over tariffs by demanding Congressional approval for unilateral trade moves. Translation? They want to kneecap Trump’s America First economic agenda from the Senate cloakroom.
But President Trump isn’t budging. He’s already vowed to veto any bill that curtails his trade authority, and Majority Leader John Thune isn’t likely to even bring the measure to the floor. Still, the rift is undeniable: Trump is remaking the GOP on trade, and the old Bush-era guard doesn’t like it one bit.
Even Sen. Ted Cruz, while toeing the line publicly, is hedging behind “concerns for consumers” and expressing hopes that the tariffs are just a temporary tactic. That might sound reasonable, but it’s also code for "We’re afraid this might work and realign the entire economic base of the country."
Rand Paul jumped in, too — warning in a Fox News op-ed that tariffs are a “tax on families” and predicting a looming recession. Same tired refrain, straight from the playbook of Wall Street’s PR firms. Paul and others may pretend they’re defending free markets, but what they’re really doing is defending a status quo that has worked out great for China, Amazon, and multinational conglomerates — but not for the people in Paducah or Bangor.