Let's Face It, The Only Retribution For Republicans Is At The Ballot Box

Do You Know Any Non-Voters? Start Working On Them Now

The Republicans have created an impossible task for themselves. They have to defund much of Medicaid to pay for their tax cuts for the rich— but, at the same time, claim that they are protecting Medicaid, which Trump pledged to do while he was running. Trump sieve, MAGA Mike, was on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo yesterday saying “The president has made absolutely clear many times, as we have as well, that we’re going to protect Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, for people who are legally beneficiaries of those programs. There are a lot of Americans who rely upon those programs, and we’ve got to ensure that they’re safeguarded. At the same time, we have to root out fraud, waste and abuse, we have to eliminate on, for example, on Medicaid who are not actually eligible to be there. Able-bodied workers, for example, young men, who are— who should never be on the program at all. And… when you have people on the program that are draining the resources, it takes it away from the people that are actually needing it the most and are intended to receive it. You’re talking about young single mothers down on their fortunes at the moment, the people with the real disabilities, the elderly.”

Maybe they can just round them up and disappear them to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (aka- CECOT). And that will be that. But that whole slashing the social safety net is frightening Republicans— or at least Republicans whop can’t with without putting together a coalition of voters that includes independents. The ones in gerrymandered all red districts don’t worry about anything except being primaries by someone from the right.

That said, yesterday’s Hill published a provactive essay by Alexander Bolton, Republicans Fear Trump’s Trade War Could Lead To A Political Wipeout. Some of the ones Bolton spoke with told him “there’s a good chance that Trump’s trade war will boomerang on Republicans politically in 2026, as rising prices and shrinking growth could offset other accomplishments by the GOP… Many Republican lawmakers view tariffs as a tax hike on American consumers, and some note that the last two times Congress enacted tax hikes on the scale of Trump’s recent tariffs, the president’s party suffered a wipeout in the next election. ‘In the national elections, you can go back to 1982 when I think it was about 26 congressional seats that were lost [by Republicans],” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who will be a top Democratic target in next year’s midterm election.

“No doubt, if we’re having the same discussions about tariffs in February of next year, all the indicators would be ‘wrong track,’” Tillis said.

He said the Trump administration needs to land the favorable trade deals its promised by February of next year or Republicans could pay a steep political price.

“They’ve got about 10 months to wrap a bow around this and say, ‘See, I told you so,’ or you’re going to start seeing political headwinds,” Tillis said.

…The Tax Foundation estimated in a Friday report that Trump’s tariffs will increase annual government revenue as a share of gross domestic product by 0.56 percent, the biggest increase since Clinton signed the 1993 tax hike.  

…Lawmakers found the sell-off in the bond markets especially distressing because of its implication for the broader economy. The yields on 10-year and 30-year Treasurys soared this week, hitting as high as 4.59 percent and 4.88 percent, putting upward pressure on borrowing costs for businesses and consumers alike.

The 30-year yield— the basis for many mortgage rates— saw its biggest weekly surge since 1982, according to Yahoo Finance.

…An Economist/YouGov poll published this past week found Trump’s job approval rating dropped by 5 percentage points compared to last week amid the turmoil caused by his tariff announcements.  

The tariffs have been a particular worry in farm states.

“It’s not good for my farmers,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said last week of the turmoil in the stock, commodity and bond markets.

Rounds, who is up for reelection next year, said, “We’ve got a lot of people that rely on being able to sell our commodities around the world.”

China, which is Trump’s biggest tariff target and has responded with its own tariffs on U.S. goods, imported $1.4 billion worth of goods from South Dakota in 2022, the last year for which data was available. That accounted for 28 percent of the goods produced in the Mount Rushmore State.

Some Republicans are warning that raising tariffs is just as politically dangerous as raising taxes, an anathema in today’s GOP.

“Tariffs are a tax on consumers, and I’m not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) declared in an interview with Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is warning fellow Republicans that they could face landslide defeats next year if they don’t change course on trade, which he says could trigger a severe economic recession.

Paul pointed out that the authors of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act— Sens. Reed Smoot (R-UT) and Willis Hawley (R-OR)— were both defeated in the 1932 election.

He said he believes the tariffs enacted in 1930 made the Great Depression significantly worse and hurt the Republican Party’s brand for decades afterward.

“We went into the wilderness for a long, long time,” he said. “The depression was multifactorial, but most historians have written that that Smoot-Hawley tariff actually made things worse and the depression longer.

“I don’t think the politics are good,” he said. “The economics of tariffs are bad; the politics, if anything, are worse.”

Jeff Stein tried putting this mess into some context. No one— likely including himself— knows exactly what Trump wants to walk the world back from the cliff he shoved it out on, but “a clearer picture of what these bilateral deals could look like is beginning to emerge, according to interviews with more than a dozen people involved in or briefed on the talks” which are already underway with Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and Israel, among other countries.”

But substantial fuzziness remains about exactly what these deals could look like, in part because of uncertainty about the president’s objectives. Even some of Trump’s advisers privately acknowledge that they lack clarity about the goals, two of the people said.

Trump, for instance, has repeatedly emphasized that he wants to close the U.S. trade deficit with other countries. This idea has been panned by both liberal and conservative economists— it makes little sense for the United States to export as much to poor nations as it imports and even attempting to do so could prove painful.

It is possible Trump could settle for deals that narrow these deficits through agreements requiring the United States to sell more to these countries. But that would still leave unclear the contour of negotiations with advanced economies that have trade surpluses with the United States, such as Australia and Britain. And deals in which foreign countries agree to buy some more U.S.-made products would hardly achieve the global balancing of trade Trump is seeking, which has been primarily fueled by the trade practices of a few countries that are heavy exporters.

Even more confounding to some foreign and U.S. officials were the comments last week of White House aide Peter Navarro, who panned German carmaker BMW’s multibillion-dollar investment in a South Carolina factory as “bad for America.” That plant appeared to reflect precisely the kind of American manufacturing Trump has been demanding for years.

“We have no idea what they want from other countries, and worse is that other countries don’t know what Trump wants from them,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank that has been skeptical of Trump’s tariffs. “I don’t know how you do negotiations in those circumstances.”

In the absence of information, ambassadors, trade representatives and other top officials have been calling and texting each other to try to share insights. They have talked about the relative merits of being assigned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as their interlocutor and tried to understand what kinds of ideas get the Trump team energized.

… Deals are likely to include a range of commitments to benefit specific domestic industries. The Japanese, for instance, may be encouraged to commit to buy large amounts of natural gas produced in the United States. Europe has taxes and regulations on internet giants and restrictions on beef imports that could be subject to negotiation. (Since Europe and the United States have largely already dropped tariffs on each other’s imports, trade deals must address non-tariff barriers.)

U.S. farmers, bludgeoned by the trade war thus far, could also stand to benefit from country-specific deals, particularly if European countries are willing to relax restrictions on some American agricultural exports.

Some trade experts doubt that these industry-specific deals would do much to return the United States to the glory of its manufacturing prowess. But with the bond market continuing to fluctuate even after the tariff pause, the president may feel he has to cut narrower deals rather than let disruptive import duties on dozens of countries snap back into effect.

Foreign countries may deploy their own countermeasures as well, particularly if they’re willing to dump their holdings of U.S. Treasurys. And Trump has already demonstrated a willingness to back down in the face of financial market volatility, which could weaken the U.S. position.

“The key question is if they start making performative deals to help some particular company, or if they focus on meaningful commitments to rebalance trade and create space for domestic manufacturing,” said Lori Wallach, director of Rethink Trade at the American Economic Liberties Project, a left-leaning think tank. “If the plan is just to have Europe get rid of its tech privacy policies and allow us to send them our beef, that has nothing to do with reducing the chronic U.S. trade deficit with the world.”