Trump’s Tariffs Are Popular With Voters Harris Needs to Win Over
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Kamala Harris knows tariffs are popular with key constituencies in swing states. The trickier part is offering voters some continuity with Joe Biden’s approach and a more measured brand of trade protectionism than Donald Trump.
The vice president has framed the former president’s economic proposals — which heavily rely on tariffs — as damaging to the economy and to Americans’ pocketbooks.
While that message hits the right notes with a large swath of the business community, it risks alienating union voters and is at odds with President Joe Biden’s decision to keep in place duties on billions of dollars in Chinese goods and even expand them earlier this year — a move she’s avoided defending.
Her campaign has branded Trump’s pitch to impose tariffs on all imports as a “Trump Sales Tax” or “Trump Tequila Tax” but has stopped short of explaining how she would protect industries — and their workers — threatened by unfair trade practices from China to the European Union.
Trump this week sought to make an economic case for tariffs, calling it “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” He floated a broader use of them as a panacea that will lead to faster growth and more manufacturing jobs, while also acting as a deterrent to persuade other countries not to abandon the US dollar.
“The only way you can do it is through the threat of tariffs,” Trump told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait on Tuesday during a conversation at the Economic Club of Chicago.
People advising Harris’ campaign say the branding of the duties as a “tax” — while avoiding the wholesale bashing of tariffs — is intentional. Their strategy to stay vague on the topic is an effort to avoid antagonizing battleground state voters as well as American businesses, people familiar with the discussions said.
Without making public commitments, Harris and her team have privately made clear that they’re pursuing continuity of the Biden policies, the people said.
Harris “seems to be at least somewhat endorsing the Trump tariff approach,” which means her hands are tied in going all-in on attacking him, said Wendy Cutler, a former acting deputy US Trade Representative and now vice president at the US-based Asia Society Policy Institute.
“Given that the earlier Trump tariffs remain in place and stakeholders’ views on tariffs are all over the map, Vice President Harris has had to walk a fine line when it comes to her policies,” Cutler said.
Leaving in place duties, she added, shows how it’s much easier to impose them than to lift them later — a reality that’s backed up by polling.
A majority of swing-state likely voters strongly or somewhat support the proposal to impose a 10% tariff on all imports, according to a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll from September.
A spokesperson for the Harris campaign declined to comment.
Trump has repeatedly sought to bait Harris into explaining her stance.
“They never took the tariff off because it was so much money, they can’t,” Trump said during the presidential debate on Sept. 10. “If she doesn’t like ‘em they should have gone out and they should have immediately cut the tariffs but those tariffs are there three and a half years now under their administration.”
Senator JD Vance, Trump’s pick for vice president, praised Biden for leaving in place the duties, calling it the “most pro-worker part” of the incumbent administration.
“It’s the one issue where Kamala Harris has run away from Joe Biden’s record,” Vance said Oct. 1 during the debate with Harris’ running mate Tim Walz.
For industrial unions like the United Steelworkers, the use of tariffs is an important part of US trade policy and one that they expect a Harris administration to employ.
Roxanne Brown, international vice president at the USW, encouraged the Democratic nominee to talk more about the benefits of tariffs in her pitch to voters in places like Pittsburgh.
‘Honest Conversation’
“There is a real, true, honest conversation to be had around tariffs and how they can benefit US industries and US manufacturing jobs,” she said in an interview.
“And it should be told in industrial states all across this country and in states where industry was gone, but now it’s coming back in large part because of what they, too, have done together over the last four years,” Brown said. “So she’s got a story to tell.”
Surrogates, including billionaire Mark Cuban, have defended Harris as pragmatic and argue that Trump’s plan is chaotic at best and recession-inducing at worst. Still, Cuban and others recognize that Trump’s tariff stance has understandably won over certain parts of the electorate.
“There’s nothing wrong with strategic tariffs. I hope we use them judiciously, and I hope we use them where we can help companies that are manufacturing in America,” Cuban said on a recent Harris campaign press call. “Not 100% of everything that the Trump administration did was wrong, right?”
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