Could Trump's tariff war be his undoing with the GOP?

Despite President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs causing economic calamity and potential harm to millions of Americans, his congressional backers remain in the White House's corner. But some Republican lawmakers are beginning to cautiously speak out.

What did the commentators say?

Republican lawmakers have expressed "varying degrees of shock and alarm" at the "scale" of Trump's sweeping global tariffs, The Hill said. Many of Trump's latest tariffs have been "met with skepticism from even his strongest allies on Capitol Hill," including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Worried about a "brutal week ahead," a "growing number" of Republican lawmakers are joining bills designed to "rebuke Trump's tariff strategy," said Politico. There is a brewing "backlash" among a "handful of Republicans in Congress, former Trump administration officials, conservative activists and other prominent supporters," said USA Today.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a "right-wing firebrand from a deep red state," has been "raking in surprising praise from his Democratic colleagues" for pushing back on Trump's apparent "overreach" into Congress' constitutionally allotted power of the purse, The Washington Post said. Nascent congressional efforts to curtail Trump's budgetary infringement are, meanwhile, a "win-win situation" for Democrats, said James Downie at MSNBC. If Republicans block those bills, Democrats can "hang those votes around GOP necks next fall." Conversely, if those votes "make GOP defections from Trump even a little regular," it threatens the narrow GOP majority's ability to govern entirely.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Already "unpopular with the American public in general," Trump's tariffs are "even more unpopular" with the 2024 voters who helped secure his electoral victory, said Vox. A "stark divide is emerging" between Trump's "core base" of MAGA voters and the "less ideological, more diverse (albeit smaller) group of Republican voters" who propelled Trump into office but don't consider themselves "MAGA-aligned." That divide has expanded to include the GOP's funding mechanism, as well: "I don't know if I would be this worried about what will happen to the economy if Bernie f---ing Sanders were president," said one "big Trump and Republican Party donor" to Rolling Stone. But, the donor said, "I am not willing to go public yet."

What next?

For many Republicans, Trump's tariffs are a "risk like no other," said The New York Times. If the "economic fallout" from these market-roiling measures is "bad enough," leading to previously safe red states looking "plausibly competitive" ahead of the midterms, GOP support for Trump "could be in jeopardy." Trump's tariffs are like a "long ball deep into the end zone," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on his "Verdict" podcast this week. If the lasting impact is a "bad recession," then the 2026 midterms "in all likelihood politically, would be a bloodbath" for Republicans.

For now, however, GOP defections from Trump's tariff agenda are relatively rare. "If Republican members start drifting away from supporting President Trump," said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) to Politico, "everybody gets weaker." House Republicans are "going to give" Trump the "space necessary to do it," said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to reporters. "We'll see how it all develops."