LINCOLNVILLE, Maine — Former President Donald Trump calls himself a “tariff man” and says taxes on imported goods are “the best thing ever invented.” So it’s no surprise that Vice President Kamala Harris has attacked the centerpiece of the GOP nominee’s economic agenda. bad policy.
What’s even more surprising, however, is that a House Democrat just introduced a bill to codify Trump’s blanket 10% tariffs, showing how long-dormant trade policy is dividing both parties.
Tariffs can trace their origins to ancient Athens and other historical civilizations and were the main source of revenue for the federal government until 1914, when the income tax replaced them. But they largely fell out of favor in the late 20th century as the US led a global free trade revolution.
By breaking down trade barriers, the cost of consumer goods has fallen and many economies around the world have grown. But critics say unfettered free trade has also decimated American manufacturing and the high-paying, often union jobs that came with it, because domestic factories couldn’t compete with lower production costs abroad.
“Other countries are finally going to pay us back, after 75 years, for all we have done for the world, and the tariffs will be substantial,” Trump said this week.
Rep. Jared Golden, a heterodox moderate Democrat from Maine who faces a tough re-election bid this year, introduced the bill Wednesday with the aim of boosting domestic manufacturing and limiting U.S. dependence on foreign goods.
“While it is undoubtedly true that Pres. Trump is the first in my lifetime to take the lead on tariffs, he is certainly not the first to think about it,” Golden said in an interview. “Our Founding Fathers understood in the nation’s early years that we should avoid becoming a nation of consumers of foreign goods because this creates dependence.”
Harris and her campaign have rejected Trump’s idea for blanket tariffs and said they would raise prices for consumers already facing record high costs due to inflation.
“It would be a sales tax on the American people,” she said in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday. “You don’t just throw around the idea of just tariffs across the board, and that’s part of the problem with Donald Trump… He’s just not that serious about how he thinks about some of these issues.”
Trump’s tariff plan also has critics on his side of the aisle.
Libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a bill this month to ban any president from raising tariffs without first getting approval from Congress — a clear shot at Trump who has said he would set his tariff policy by through executive action alone. (Trump was able to raise tariffs without congressional approval during his first term.)
Despite Harris and other attacks on Trump’s tariffs, the Biden-Harris administration decided to maintain some of the tariffs Trump imposed on Chinese steel and aluminum during his first term and even imposed tariffs on strategic sectors such as electric vehicles and semiconductors to increase.
Harris did not elaborate on these rates when asked in the MSNBC interview.
Yet Biden and Harris have consistently criticized blanket tariffs as “arbitrary” tools that risk “undermining our alliances,” arguing that targeted sanctions do not carry the inflationary risk of broader dispersion.
Golden, like some others who favor tariffs, says an across-the-board tariff would be good for American workers and national security, regardless of whether Trump supports the idea or not.
While Trump doesn’t, Golden acknowledges that tariffs would drive up prices on imported goods, but says those higher costs would make domestically produced products more competitive and put upward pressure on quality because imported products no longer rely solely on price could compete.
“It made sense after World War II to pursue globalization because we were one of the last industrialized economies standing,” Golden said. “That model no longer applies today.”
Economists are generally much more negative about tariffs. Most say the data clearly shows that freer trade leads to greater economic growth, and they say Trump’s across-the-board tariffs would increase inflation and cost jobs.
Politically, however, tariffs appear to be quite popular, with a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showing that 56% of Americans support the idea, and that number is likely to be even higher in a Trump-leaning district like Golden’s, which, like many others, the last forty years saw a slew of factory closures.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
