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It turns out that Liberation Day was the beginning of the end for any significant political support for Trump’s tariff policies.
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. In 2016, Donald Trump’s support for tariffs helped propel him to a shock election victory.
This turn counts as a surprise of Trump’s second term, and an unwanted one for the president and his party. During his political rise in 2015 and 2016, Trump exploited issues that revealed a divide between popular and elite opinion, and trade was prominent among them. His protectionism—expressed in sharp and excoriating terms—poached traditional Democratic ideological territory and appealed to working-class voters, allowing him to dismantle the traditionally Democratic “blue wall” states.
It turns out that Liberation Day was the beginning of the end for any significant political support for his tariff policy. The assumption has usually been that tax policy favors protectionism – the benefits are very visible and focused on specific sectors and businesses that are highly committed to maintaining them, while the costs are widely dispersed among people who don’t care as much.
In this case, however, the logic is turned on its head: the costs felt by people without a direct stake in protectionism are the support for the tariffs overall. In addition, there is the fact that Trump won his second term in the White House and promises to reduce prices – and import tariffs increase them. The shambolic and arbitrary rollout of tariffs, as well as the dubious legal basis for many of them, did not help either.
According to a poll conducted by the libertarian Cato Institute with Morning Consult, 74% of Americans say the tariffs have increased the prices they pay, including 66% of Republicans. About half of those polled, 53%, say the tariffs have weakened the economy, and 49% say they have hurt their quality of life. After the latest trade spat with Canada, a Politico/Public First poll found that 56% of Americans think the tariffs on our northern neighbor are “wrong.”
” According to a CBS/YouGov poll, people prefer a candidate who opposes Trump’s tariffs to one who supports them by 26 percentage points. The Democratic Senate candidates promise to reverse Trump’s tariffs, even card protectionist Sherrod Brown is critical.
And some Republican candidates in states with a lot of trade with Canada have dissented from the trade war with Our Friendly Neighbor to the North. reduced its purchases of US farm products Exports of wheat, cotton, beef and pork to China decreased last year, and total agricultural exports to China fell by 66%. Trying to address complaints about high grocery prices, the administration wants to waive tariffs on beef to help consumers, but farmers — hurt by other tariffs — balk at a measure that would lower prices at a time when they are struggling.
Even if Trump’s theory of tariffs is correct—that higher import tariffs lead to reindustrialization—the policy involves immediate disruption and increased costs in exchange for a protectionism-driven expansion that will take years to fully achieve.
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