Trade policy has a way of dividing political parties. Shifts towards liberalized or protectionist trade measures have disparate impacts on industries and regions, scrambling the usual partisan fault lines.
For example, the last two Democratic presidents embraced freer trade over the concerns of party members. Bill Clinton helped get the North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress even though in both congressional chambers, most Democrats—sensitive to the threat of lost manufacturing jobs in blue-collar regions—opposed it. Clinton also backed Permanent Most Favored Nation trade status for China in 2000, which became law over the objections of two-thirds of House Democrats.
American sentiment toward trade with China soured by the next decade, especially in blue-collar communities. When Obama forged the Trans-Pacific Partnership, arguing it would contain China’s unfair trading practices, he ran into a phalanx of Democratic opposition. As the Democratic nominee in 2016, Hillary Clinton opposed the deal even though she had helped midwife it when she was Obama’s Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013. Like other Democrats, she was worried about further erosion of support from working-class voters.
Today, President Donald Trump is unilaterally imposing a protectionist regime not just on the world but on Republican Party politicians, many of whom are free traders at heart and only lending support through gritted teeth. Financial markets cratered, as did public opinion of tariffs when the president rolled them out this month.
Yet, internal Democratic Party fault lines have not been entirely erased. Look at two Rust Belt governors weighing presidential bids. Josh Shapiro is governor of Pennsylvania, home of many pro-tariff steelworkers. Still, he has been a firm opponent of the Trump tariffs, saying, “The Trump administration is looking to screw over our farmers” and “drive up costs on consumers and businesses throughout Pennsylvania.” Meanwhile, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, whose Michigan is home to America’s largest automakers—General Motors and Ford–is trying harder to straddle the argument. In a Washington speech last week, she said, “I understand the motivation behind the tariffs, and I can tell you, here’s where President Trump and I do agree. We do need to make more stuff in America. I’m not against tariffs outright, but it is a blunt tool. You can’t just pull out the tariff hammer to swing at every problem without a clear defined end goal.”
The House Democratic leadership, hungry to flip Republican-held swing districts, argued on its X account that “Trump’s trade policy has been a chaotic mess, but that tariffs—if done right and paired with strong pro-worker and industrial policies—can help supercharge manufacturing,” as it shared a video message from Representative Chris Deluzio from Trump-friendly western Pennsylvania. Soon after that post was up, Representative Ritchie Torres of the South Bronx seemingly shot back on X, “We as Democrats must speak out forcefully against Trump’s weaponization of tariffs to wreak havoc on the American economy. Muddled milquetoast messaging only emboldens Trump’s madness.”
The political logic of the nuanced approach is easy to grasp. To win back the House, the Senate, and the White House means clawing back support in “heartland” areas where skepticism of economic globalization fueled Trump’s rise and comeback. Therefore, don’t let knee-jerk hatred of Trump trap you into positions only embraced by coastal, white-collar MSNBC viewers.
Yet I suspect the I-like-tariffs-but-not-those-tariffs strategy is a misguided attempt to relitigate the trade battles of the past, not the one of the future.
Trade became a problematic subject for Democrats following NAFTA’s implementation in 1994. Democratic-backed policies designed to help working-class and rural voters transition from a manufacturing-based to a service-driven economy weren’t panaceas. Many displaced workers didn’t find new careers with stable pension plans. While unrelated to trade, cataclysms like the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t help bolster confidence in the idea of an interconnected world.
However, we’re now getting a crash course in the un-globalized economy.
We are subject to the whims of a president without a plan. Stability and certainty are elusive. Long-range personal and business financial planning is impossible. Prices are immediately higher without any immediate benefits.
Even before he signed NAFTA into law in 1993, Clinton recognized the potential for a rocky transition. He’d campaigned in 1992 on retraining, and in office, he touted “a reemployment and job retraining system for the 21st century.” Still, bitterness settled in among displaced workers when his assistance programs fell short of the goal of “higher wages and greater security for our people.”
Similarly, Trump is asking America to suck it up with a promise of better times ahead. “We are bringing back jobs and businesses like never before,” Trump promised on Truth Social soon after the tariffs kicked in, “THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN. HANG TOUGH, it won’t be easy, but the end result will be historic.” Having put far less thought than Clinton into how to manage a complex economic transition and having a rap sheet of false promises that could wrap the White House many times over, Trump does not deserve any benefit of the doubt.
Trump’s reset of the global economy has changed the trade debate. Whatever challenges were posed by an international trading regime imperfectly managed by the World Trade Organization pale compared to a worldwide trade war waged by an impulsive president who is even perplexing his aides.
The immediate question is: Should we have a trade war or peace?
A trade war is stupid. Economic stability gets nuked when leaders launch tariffs like they are firing missiles.
The Trump argument is that since we were getting “ripped off,” risking a recession is necessary to make trade policies fair. This argument misses any explanation of why Americans must suffer to make trade policies fair and how making them pay higher prices gives Washington leverage to forge better trade deals. Trump wants a return to the economic rules of the 19th century, but nostalgia for the pre-global economy past is devastating in the interconnected present. A global trade war destabilizes the economy without guaranteeing benefits, and there is a significant risk of long-term damage.
Trade peace is smart. We maximize economic stability when we forge global agreements that bind countries regardless of political shifts and avoid giving one person the power to break agreements on a whim. Under trade peace, businesses can function, investments can grow, and people can plan.
Under trade peace, America still has a defense—a range of policies, including strategic tariffs to address imbalances, and it can fight back when another country steps out of line. Nations may not always be in perfect trade harmony, but the global economy can weather sporadic trade skirmishes more easily than all-out war.
Democrats need not get all members to agree on every policy detail. Fresh internal debate about what specific trade policies would be beneficial in a post-Trump world would be a productive intellectual exercise. But such wonkery can occur off-camera.
The voting public should hear the simpler message: Democrats will end the global trade war and restore global trade peace. With a substantial number of congressional Republicans, they could vote to strip Trump of unilateral tariff powers to restore trade peace and override the inevitable veto. If Congressional Republicans refuse to break with Trump and end the war, then they will own the current chaos, and Democrats can offer voters calm when they return to power.
