The 2024 elections were a resounding victory for Republicans. Now, the GOP is making the mistake of thinking it can do whatever it wants and the pendulum won’t swing the other way.
President Donald Trump has pushed through with his plan to put “reciprocal” tariffs on the rest of the world. What Trump has actually decided to do is place massive tariffs on countries that have low tariffs on the U.S. but export a lot of goods to us, while placing minimum tariffs on countries with massive tariffs on the U.S. that export next to nothing. This comes after stoking a bizarre trade war with Canada that Trump has pursued with more zeal than one against adversarial countries such as, say, China.
Trump was elected primarily because of the economy. President Joe Biden had allowed inflation to run rampant for years, and voters reminisced to Trump’s first term, where the economy was humming until the COVID-19 pandemic. Before taking office, CBS News found that 42% of people thought Trump’s policies would help them financially and 28% thought they would hurt them.
That has flipped to 23% saying Trump’s policies will help and 42% saying they would hurt. Less than half of Republicans say they are better off after two months of Trump’s presidency, 55% of voters say Trump is too focused on tariffs, and 64% say he isn’t focused enough on lowering prices. And that was all before Trump’s latest round of tariffs on everyone from allies such as Japan to islands populated only by penguins.
Congressional Republicans say these tariffs will lead to negotiation with other countries, but the administration says this isn’t a negotiation. The tariffs are supposedly “reciprocal,” but they are based on trade deficits, not the tariffs those countries place on us. Trump’s tariffs will lead to higher prices, and voters can’t have any confidence in his plan when it isn’t clear what the plan is.
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If voters are going to be asked to eat higher prices after years of Bidenflation, Trump and Republicans will have betrayed the single greatest priority voters had in the 2024 elections. That means Democrats likely won’t have to change anything about their party to win those voters back — not the radical transgender policies, not the soft-on-crime or open-borders immigration policies, not the climate obsession.
Trump is giving Democrats an electoral gift. He is asking voters to shoulder more economic burdens after already losing their goodwill on the issue not even two months into the job. This is an arrogant move that mirrors the arrogance Democrats have when they think they have an unbreakable majority, and it is likely to end as well for Republicans in 2026 and 2028 as it did for Democrats in 2024.