Will tariffs taint Trumpism?
Two paths determine the answer, but at the moment voters know the Trump they voted for and are backing him.
Tariffs are on. Over the weekend, Donald Trump ordered tariffs of 25% on Canada (with a 10% tariff on crude oil) and Mexico goods, as well as a 10% tariff on Chinese imports. Canada has responded in kind, and Mexico and China have said they will retaliate too.
This morning markets will react, and signs over the weekend are bad. But what about the impact on the public? Will popular support for Trumpism - and warmth for the Republican Party ahead of crucial midterms next year - survive on impact?
Whether it does so depends on which path we now take.
Before I examine those paths, why does this even matter? Because those 2026 midterms determine the power President Trump has in his final two years. Early moments in a presidency can have a crushing effect: Biden’s approval rating, for example, never recovered after the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Path 1: Stand-off
This is the scenario in which no one budges. Tariffs stay on, and even escalate further (Trump did promise counter-tariffs to the counter-tariffs). An economist friend says that a stand-off lasting beyond two to three months would make a stand-off’s impact on the economy truly felt. We would almost certainly see price rises in grocery stores and at the pump, and job losses too.
That is going to hurt with the public, especially Independents who backed Trump in 2024. Arguments about the need for re-shoring are not going to make up for headlines about American brands shedding jobs. You can’t re-shore Tennessee Whiskey. If there is a lesson from the Biden years, it is that voters do not listen to long-winded arguments about why prices are going up. They just blame the incumbent. Even those voters who stay loyal to Trump may still punish the Republicans for it in the polls next year.
Americans do support tariffs as it stands, by 52-33 for China, 41-30 for Mexico, and 37-33 for Canada. But that is a narrow margin for the latter two, and consent for tariffs on Canada is flimsy; by two to one, Americans think Canada has traded *fairly* with the US, with Republicans more likely to say that than not too. That basically means voters are going into this without feeling Canadian tariffs are necessary.
If Democrats were able to get their act together and make very clear this is Trump’s tax, then I think the damage to the GOP would be significant and potentially seismic.
Path 2: Compromise
But there is a softer path and this seems to be the one that most Trump whisperers are currently landing on. It is in no one’s interests for this to last a long time: everyone loses. Under this logic, the Trump team will exact concessions from Mexico and Canada on immigration, drug trafficking, or even wider protectionism, and declare a win. That requires both sides to play the game, but exports to America dominate Mexico and Canada’s economies: for all of Trudeau’s bravado about ‘buying Canadian’, the economic damage would be huge and both governments know it.
China is likely a separate question. There is both less political pressure to relent and less chance of an adverse public reaction: those imports are more likely to be high-end products and technology which, though important, is not the gas and grocery hit that we might see from Mexico and Canada.
Not everything would need to be reversed in this scenario, but enough to stem the worst damage.
Such a result might mean it is too late to recover a blighted reputation of the U.S. abroad (there was lots of booing of US teams at Canadian football games this weekend). But such a result would mean domestic public opinion would shrug - and even, for Trump voters, applaud. There might be some market damage, there might even be a tangible impact on the economy, but the clouds would move on fast.
Would voters not punish Trump for the chaos of the original act? No. Voters know the Donald Trump they voted for - they knew he was pro-tariff, they knew he was unpredictable, they knew he was brash. Anyone I interviewed about Trump during the campaign would not have been surprised whatsoever at his comments about DEI after the plane crash in DC. They know what they chose, and they are happy to live with it if he can deliver for them.
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One final point - and one of my favorite poll questions we ran last year. Voters do not know what tariffs are. Look at these numbers, from a poll we ran in September of 1,000 likely voters:
I wonder how many readers would have answered correctly: I wouldn’t have until I read about it last year. That essential misconception means that if Scenario 1 takes place, the damage could be greater still.
But for now, voters know the Trump they voted for. And they are quietly backing their man as he enters the arena.