Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), center left, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), center right, with other members of the congressional Democratic leadership, speak to reporters, April 8, 2025, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Trump’s insane trade war has pushed a solid economy toward inflation and recession, roiled financial markets, and united other nations against the United States. Worse is yet to come in the escalating tit-for-tat with China, which has far more staying power than the U.S.
So what has the commentariat had to say about Trump’s lunacy? Well, several commentators have taken the occasion to attack Democrats. Say what?
It takes a fair amount of work to sort out the complex dynamics and reverberations of Trump’s ever-changing trade war. But for a pundit looking for a quickie hit, it’s easier just to whack the Democrats.
Catherine Rampell in Friday’s Washington Post attacks not Trump but “the mealymouthed critique of President Donald Trump’s trade wars from many Democrats.” According to Rampell, “They awkwardly triangulate between bashing Trump’s catastrophic ideas and touting support for their own similarly spirited, if scaled-down, ideas. No wonder their message is falling flat.”
Rampell specifically faults Joe Biden for extending Trump’s tariffs on China, populist Pennsylvania Congressman Chris Deluzio for calling for a “pro-worker” trade policy, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for warning that tariffs can be an excuse for corporate price-gouging.
This indictment is malarkey. The overwhelming consensus among Democrats is that the old, corporate free-trade regime failed workers, that well-targeted tariffs can have a place in an industrial policy (especially when it comes to China), and that random and universal high tariffs are idiotic.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries put it well and spoke for most Democrats: “Tariffs, when properly utilized, have a role to play in trying to make sure that you have a competitive environment for our workers and our businesses. That’s not what’s going on right now. This is a reckless economic sledgehammer …”
Paul Krugman went even further than Rampell. In his Monday morning Substack post, Krugman wrote, “Democrats need to stop giving Trump cover.” He added, “Tariffs may look less expensive than industrial policy, but that’s only because many of their costs are off budget … if you think promoting manufacturing with subsidies is too expensive, you should definitely be against tariffs, which are actually even more expensive.”
In fact, as Krugman obliquely admits, Biden’s well-targeted tariffs against China were an important complement to Biden’s successful industrial policies and did not provoke a trade war. In the Biden years, the trade deficit with China dropped by more than one-fourth and manufacturing construction soared. Krugman calls these “tough policies against China.” You can say the word, Paul: They were tariffs!
The fact is that there is no central committee establishing a single party line for Democrats. And there is no single leader of the opposition. Democrats have differed from each other on issues and tactics, giving commentators an easy target—and adding to Trump’s free ride. But on trade and tariffs, Democrats have been sensibly unified, frustrating the free-trade maximalists who want the party to renounce any impulse that puts workers in the conversation.
There is a long-overdue third way between the corporate brand of free trade still favored by too many pundits and Trump’s trade war against all. It’s a trade regime that is mostly tariff-free, but allows room for targeted industrial policies and selective retaliation when nations like China cheat. This is the position of most Democrats, as it should be.
