‘Voters are like, No thanks’: Trump’s tariffs fall flat with the working class

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It’s become an article of faith for trade hardliners in both parties that a protectionist agenda is a guaranteed pathway to building support among working-class voters. But now that President Donald Trump is testing that theory in practice, it is largely flopping on the campaign trail.

Trump has pursued the most confrontational trade agenda of any president since at least William McKinley at the end of the 19th century, and by the estimation of some historians, even Thomas Jefferson around its beginning.

But even in heavily blue-collar states and House districts that were long believed to be the most receptive to a protectionist agenda, Democrats almost uniformly have been comfortable this year running against the Trump tariffs, while Republicans have struggled to defend them. Even Democrats who are deeply skeptical of free trade agreements — like Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown and Brian Poindexter , the ironworker running against Rep. Max Miller for an Ohio House seat — have been unreserved in condemning the Trump tariffs. Polls by CNN and other media organizations consistently show that far more Americans believe the tariffs have hurt rather than helped their financial bottom line — and that consensus extends even to working-class white voters without a four-year college degree.

All this marks a fundamental shift in the politics of trade that could loosen Trump’s hold on the working-class voters at the core of his coalition — and allow Democrats this fall to recover some of the ground they have lost in blue-collar and rural places. Trump’s skepticism about the North American Free Trade Agreement and other moves to lower trade barriers clearly helped power his historic gains in blue-collar communities during his initial 2016 race and his first presidential term. But his sweeping second-term tariffs — which exceed even the wish lists that other protectionist presidential candidates have put forward since the 1970s — appear to be bleeding Republican support, even in those working-class places. “Everyone else talked about it, but Trump did it,” says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank. “And voters are like: ‘no thanks.’”

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For decades, a steady procession of presidential hopefuls in both parties had offered a tough-on-trade message and an assortment of policies to restrict imports. That list extends from Republican John Connally in 1980 to Democrats Walter Mondale and Richard Gephardt in the 1980s to GOP insurgent Patrick J. Buchanan and independent candidate Ross Perot in the 1990s.

But before Trump, none of them won the presidency — and with it the ability to implement a protectionist agenda. Presidents of both parties have often provided some protection to American industries threatened by foreign competitors. But the general pattern since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s has been that Republican and Democratic presidents alike have generally defended free trade, while the protectionist impulse has been confined mostly to Congress, notes Douglas Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and historian of American trade policy.

Trump’s willingness to impose tariffs on a panoramic list of US trading partners is unmatched since McKinley in the 1890s, says Alan Tonelson, a longtime manufacturing trade policy analyst and advocate for import restrictions. Irwin thinks Trump outmatches even McKinley: He believes Trump is pursuing the most confrontational trade policy since Jefferson imposed an (ultimately disastrous) 1807 embargo on all commerce with both England and Napoleon-era France in protest of their attacks on American shipping during their worldwide conflict. “There’s been no president in modern history who has used the tariff threat nearly as much as Donald Trump,” says Irwin.

Stanley Greenberg, a longtime Democratic pollster who has studied the party’s diminishing support among working-class white voters since the 1980s, says that Trump’s hardline approach on trade contributed to his 2016 breakthroughs against Hillary Clinton in battered blue-collar communities that had, in many cases, previously voted for Barack Obama during his two presidential victories.

“Hillary got hurt and Obama got hurt by not understanding these sentiments in the industrial Midwest,” Greenberg says. “And Trump used that to his advantage to win the election in 2016 and it was a fundamental part of his presidency in the first term, in which the association of him going after bad trade agreements and him championing tariffs” allowed him to present himself as a champion of “forgotten” working-class voters.

In his first term, Trump sharply veered from the preponderantly free trade outlook of his three immediate predecessors: Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Trump renegotiated NAFTA , the free trade agreement that Clinton pushed through Congress; scrapped the pan-Asian free trade agreement that Obama had negotiated (but never submitted to Congress for fear of hurting Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election); and imposed tariffs primarily on steel and aluminum imports from many countries as well as a wide array of products from China.

But all that was barely an overture for Trump’s second term. To a far greater extent than in his first term, Trump has levied, withdrawn and reimposed tariffs; brandished threats; and launched investigations in a bewildering blur that has upended the rules of trade with dozens of countries. He has moved as aggressively against allies, such as Canada and the European Union, as against traditional trade adversaries such as China.

Before Trump, Holtz-Eakin notes, many political leaders believed “the politics were good” for protectionism, “but the foreign policy implications were bad.” As a result, “no Republican would go there,” he says. “But Trump didn’t care about the latter. So, we’ve (been able) to see the economics in isolation.” And the reaction has been very different than what Trump — and other trade hawks — expected.

Since at least the 1970s, the dominant assumption in each party has been that trade issues divided the public along educational lines, with college-educated voters the most likely to favor expanding trade and working-class voters most receptive to a protectionist message of restricting imports to try to protect domestic manufacturing jobs.

That traditional divide persisted even as Trump returned to office. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ annual foreign policy polling, for instance, found that in 2025 nearly two-thirds of whites without a college degree preferred a trade policy that imposed restrictions on imports to protect jobs over an approach that minimized restrictions to lower prices. Whites with a college degree split evenly over which approach they preferred; notably, however, in a sharp departure from their white counterparts, a slight majority of nonwhites without a college degree preferred a trade policy that focused on costs. College-educated nonwhites were the most skeptical of all toward restrictions.

But as Trump has implemented his tariffs, they have proven less attractive for most Americans in practice than in theory. In Pew polling this January , 60% of Americans opposed his tariff increases; more than twice as many said it had affected their family negatively as positively. In a CNN/SSRS poll this April , four times as many Americans said the tariffs had hurt their personal finances as said they’d helped. Recent polls in Wisconsin and Ohio , two heavily working-class, manufacturing-oriented states, both found about 60% of residents opposed the tariffs. Polls released this month have found overwhelming opposition to Trump’s latest trade war against Canada, particularly in states along the border: In CNN surveys , about two-thirds or more of voters in both Michigan and Maine said the new Canadian tariffs were bad for their state.

In many of these surveys, whites without a four-year college degree remained relatively more sympathetic to Trump’s approach than other groups; in January’s Pew survey, for instance, they split evenly on whether they approved of the tariffs.

But even that represents much more resistance than Trump usually faces among a group that supported him by 2:1 margins in all three of his presidential races. And polls consistently find that even most whites without a four-year degree believe the tariffs have hurt their personal bottom line. In the April CNN/SRSS poll, for instance, nearly three times as many non-college whites said the tariffs had hurt as helped their finances. Big majorities of non-college whites opposed the Canada tariffs in both Maine and Michigan.

Other groups were even more lopsided in their opposition. In CNN’s national polling, two-thirds of Black voters and three-fourths of Hispanics said the tariffs had hurt their finances. So did about 7 in 10 college-educated whites. In Maine, college-educated whites opposed the Canada tariffs by more than 11 to 1.

Even supporters like Tonelson agree part of the problem for the tariffs has been the erratic, unpredictable way Trump has imposed, removed and restored them. “It is an unnerving spectacle to a needless extent,” he says.

But many agree the bigger obstacle for the tariffs is that Trump is advancing them at a moment when voters’ top concern is the struggle with persistently high costs. “He’s decided to do these tariffs in such a way that jumped up prices … at a time of unbelievable anger about the high cost of living,” Greenberg says. The receptivity to tough trade measures evident in Trump’s first term, he adds, “has been completely blown away by this new period of inflation.”

Wisconsin-based Republican strategist Mark Graul agrees. The tariff agenda is not working for Trump and the GOP, he says, for a straightforward reason: “because it is being blamed for the higher prices that people are experiencing.”

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Even more than the polls, the actions of politicians capture how the politics of trade have shifted.

It’s probably not a surprise that the tariffs face intense criticism from Josh Turek and Adam Hamilton , the Democratic Senate candidates in Iowa and Kansas, as well as Dan Osborn , the populist independent running in Nebraska. High tariffs have always been unpopular in farm states because of fears of foreign retaliation against agricultural exports.

More revealing is the opposition to the Trump tariffs from Democrats running in burly manufacturing states where many voters have long been skeptical of free trade deals.

In Michigan, for instance, the Democratic nominees for governor (Jocelyn Benson) and Senate ( Abdul El-Sayed ) have both denounced their Republican opponents for supporting Trump’s tariffs, especially the new levies on Canada. Democratic Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who represents a struggling blue-collar district around Flint, recently blamed Trump’s “chaotic tariff regime” and “reckless” trade policies for the closure of a semiconductor manufacturing plant in her district. “It’s that chaos that causes businesses to close,” she charged.

Poindexter, the ironworker seeking a House seat south of Cleveland, is running a new football-themed ad promising to “block the bad trade deals.” But an in interview, Poindexter said that while he would have voted against NAFTA had he been in Congress at the time, “what we’ve seen with the blanket tariffs is it’s driven up costs on working families.”

“I think tariffs can be very useful in leveling the playing field,” he added. “But it makes no sense to tariff things we don’t produce in America.”

Perhaps most striking has been the reaction from former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is opposing Republican Sen. Jon Husted this year. No Democrat has a longer pedigree of criticizing free trade than Brown. Yet he too says flatly , “These tariffs have clearly not worked. … People everywhere are paying more for everything and this new batch of tariffs against Canada is (taking) a disastrous policy and making even more of a disaster.”

Against this onslaught, hardly any Republicans have broken with Trump (with Sen. Susan Collins’ careful criticism of the Canada tariffs an exception). The vast majority of House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly voted to defend the tariffs. “Look, these tariffs are working,” Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall insisted to loud boos during a raucous debate with Hamilton this month .

Tonelson, too, argues that “from an economic point of view, it’s gone very well.” He points to an increase in total manufacturing output during Trump’s second term. But that level is still lower than at points of Trump’s first term and Barack Obama’s second.

In any case, the more politically relevant measure is how many people are working in manufacturing. And on that front, despite gains in recent months, slightly fewer people are employed in manufacturing now (12.638 million) than when Trump returned to office (12.673 million), according to federal statistics . That’s only about 7.5% of all workers . Manufacturing employment today, in fact, is only slightly higher than when Trump first took office in 2017. “Even people who were saying (at first), ‘I want to give him the benefit of the doubt,’ will say ‘it’s just not paying off,’” says Eva Kemp, director of paid media and partnerships at American Bridge, a Democratic-aligned group that focuses on working-class voters.

Those employment numbers point to a deeper vulnerability. The backlash against Trump’s levies suggests that a protectionist agenda faces a fundamental mismatch between winners and losers. The best-case for Trump’s tariffs is that they might eventually add a few hundred thousand more manufacturing jobs. But the number of people who might get those jobs — someday — will always be dwarfed by the number paying higher prices today. “Even if it’s absolutely the right thing to do, it’s really, really hard to persuade people who are responding to the upfront costs,” says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and longtime Democratic policy analyst.

Even after Trump, Democrats seem unlikely to return to the Obama/Bill Clinton enthusiasm for free trade agreements. But, as Galston says, on tariffs, the next Democratic president is likely to replace Trump’s “sledgehammer with the scalpel.” The bigger question may be whether the protectionist tide that has been surging in the GOP under Trump starts to recede if his tariffs cost some congressional Republicans their own jobs in November.

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两党的贸易强硬派都坚信，推行贸易保护主义政策是赢得工人阶级选民支持的万全之策。但如今，特朗普总统正在实践这一理论，结果却在竞选过程中遭遇了惨败。

特朗普推行的贸易政策是自 19 世纪末的威廉·麦金莱以来最具对抗性的总统政策，一些历史学家甚至认为，其对抗性甚至超过了托马斯·杰斐逊总统执政初期的政策。

但即便在蓝领人口众多的州和长期以来被认为最容易接受贸易保护主义议程的众议院选区，今年民主党人几乎一致地公开反对特朗普的关税政策，而共和党人则难以为其辩护。即使是对自由贸易协定深表怀疑的民主党人——例如俄亥俄州参议员候选人谢罗德·布朗和挑战现任众议员马克斯·米勒的钢铁工人布莱恩·波因德克斯特——也毫不掩饰地谴责特朗普的关税政策。CNN和其他媒体机构的民调始终显示，绝大多数美国人认为关税损害了他们的经济利益，而非帮助他们——这种共识甚至延伸到了没有四年制大学学位的工薪阶层白人选民中。

这一切标志着贸易政治格局的根本性转变，可能会削弱特朗普对其核心联盟——工人阶级选民——的掌控，并可能使民主党在今年秋季的选举中收复部分在蓝领和农村地区失去的阵地。特朗普对北美自由贸易协定和其他降低贸易壁垒举措的质疑，显然助长了他在2016年首次竞选和第一个总统任期内于蓝领社区取得的历史性胜利。但他在第二个任期内推出的全面关税政策——甚至超过了自20世纪70年代以来其他保护主义总统候选人提出的愿望清单——似乎正在流失共和党的支持，即便是在这些工人阶级聚居区。“其他人都在谈论这些，但特朗普付诸行动，”中间偏右智库“美国行动论坛”主席道格拉斯·霍尔茨-埃金表示，“选民们的反应是：‘不，谢谢。’”

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几十年来，两党不断有总统候选人提出强硬的贸易政策和一系列限制进口的方案。这份名单从1980年的共和党人约翰·康纳利，到20世纪80年代的民主党人沃尔特·蒙代尔和理查德·格普哈特，再到20世纪90年代的共和党挑战者帕特里克·J·布坎南和独立候选人罗斯·佩罗，不一而足。

但在特朗普之前，他们都未能赢得总统大选——也就失去了推行贸易保护主义政策的能力。两党总统都曾为受到外国竞争对手威胁的美国产业提供过一定程度的保护。但自20世纪30年代富兰克林·罗斯福以来，总体趋势是共和党和民主党总统普遍捍卫自由贸易，而贸易保护主义的倾向则主要局限于国会。达特茅斯学院经济学教授、美国贸易政策史学家道格拉斯·欧文指出。

长期从事制造业贸易政策分析并倡导进口限制的艾伦·托内尔森表示，特朗普对众多美国贸易伙伴加征关税的意愿，自19世纪90年代麦金利以来无人能及。欧文认为，特朗普甚至比麦金利还要过分：他相信，特朗普正在推行自杰斐逊1807年对英国和拿破仑时代的法国实施（最终酿成灾难性的）全面贸易禁运以来最具对抗性的贸易政策。杰斐逊此举是为了抗议两国在世界大战期间袭击美国船只。“在现代历史上，没有哪位总统像唐纳德·特朗普那样频繁地使用关税威胁，”欧文说道。

斯坦利·格林伯格是一位长期从事民主党民调的专家，自 20 世纪 80 年代以来，他一直在研究该党在白人工薪阶层选民中支持率下降的问题。他表示，特朗普在贸易问题上的强硬立场促成了他在 2016 年大选中战胜希拉里·克林顿，尤其是在那些曾经在巴拉克·奥巴马两次总统选举中都投票支持他的、饱受打击的蓝领社区。

格林伯格说：“希拉里和奥巴马都因为不了解中西部工业区的这些情绪而受到伤害。特朗普利用这一点赢得了2016年的大选，这成为他第一任期内的一个重要组成部分。他抨击糟糕的贸易协定、大力支持关税，这使他得以把自己塑造成被‘遗忘的’工人阶级选民的拥护者。”

特朗普在其第一任期内，与他的三位前任——奥巴马、小布什和克林顿——奉行的以自由贸易为主的政策截然不同。他重新谈判了北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA），这项自由贸易协定是克林顿力推在国会通过的；他废除了奥巴马谈判达成的泛亚自由贸易协定（奥巴马出于担心影响希拉里·克林顿在2016年大选中的选情，从未将该协定提交国会）；并对来自许多国家的钢铁和铝进口产品以及来自中国的众多产品加征关税。

但这仅仅是特朗普第二任期的序幕。与第一任期相比，特朗普第二任期内加征、撤销和重新征收关税的力度要大得多；他不断发出威胁；并发起调查，其令人眼花缭乱的举动颠覆了与数十个国家的贸易规则。他对加拿大和欧盟等盟友采取的强硬手段，与他对中国等传统贸易对手采取的手段一样咄咄逼人。

霍尔茨-埃金指出，在特朗普之前，许多政治领导人认为保护主义“政治上有利”，但“外交政策影响却很糟糕”。因此，“没有共和党人会支持它，”他说。“但特朗普不在乎后者。所以，我们得以单独看待其经济影响。”而实际的反应与特朗普和其他贸易鹰派的预期截然不同。

至少从 20 世纪 70 年代开始，各党派的主要假设是，贸易问题会根据教育程度划分公众，受过大学教育的选民最有可能支持扩大贸易，而工人阶级选民最容易接受限制进口以保护国内制造业就业的保护主义信息。

即使特朗普重返白宫，这种传统的分歧依然存在。例如，芝加哥全球事务委员会的年度外交政策民调发现，到2025年，近三分之二未受过大学教育的白人更倾向于采取限制进口以保护就业的贸易政策，而不是采取减少限制以降低价格的政策。受过大学教育的白人对这两种政策的偏好则势均力敌；然而，值得注意的是，与白人截然不同的是，未受过大学教育的非白人中略占多数的人更倾向于以成本为重点的贸易政策。受过大学教育的非白人对贸易限制最为怀疑。

但随着特朗普关税政策的实施，事实证明，这些政策对大多数美国人来说，实际效果远不如理论上那么好。皮尤研究中心今年1月的民调显示，60%的美国人反对他提高关税；认为关税对他们的家庭产生负面影响的人数是认为产生正面影响的人数的两倍多。CNN/SSRS今年4月的民调显示，认为关税损害了个人财务状况的人数是认为关税有所帮助的人数的四倍。威斯康星州和俄亥俄州是两个以工人阶级为主、制造业发达的州，最近的民调显示，约60%的居民反对关税。本月公布的民调显示，民众对特朗普最新发起的针对加拿大的贸易战持压倒性反对态度，尤其是在美加边境各州：CNN的调查显示，密歇根州和缅因州约有三分之二或更多的选民认为，对加拿大征收的新关税对他们的州不利。

在许多此类调查中，没有四年制大学学位的白人仍然比其他群体更同情特朗普的做法；例如，在 1 月份皮尤研究中心的调查中，他们对是否赞成关税的意见势均力敌。

但即便如此，这也代表着特朗普在以往总统竞选中，面对的阻力远超以往，尤其是在那些在他三次总统竞选中都以2:1优势支持他的群体中。民调也始终显示，即使是大多数没有四年制大学学位的白人也认为关税损害了他们的个人经济状况。例如，在4月份的CNN/SRSS民调中，认为关税损害了他们经济状况的白人人数几乎是认为关税对他们经济有益人数的三倍。在缅因州和密歇根州，绝大多数没有大学学位的白人都反对对加拿大征收关税。

其他群体反对关税的立场则更加一边倒。CNN的全国民调显示，三分之二的黑人选民和四分之三的西班牙裔选民表示，关税损害了他们的经济状况。约有十分之七受过大学教育的白人也持相同观点。在缅因州，受过大学教育的白人反对加拿大关税的比例超过11比1。

即使是像托内尔森这样的支持者也承认，关税问题的一部分原因在于特朗普反复无常、难以预测地实施、取消和恢复关税。“这完全没有必要，简直是一场令人不安的闹剧，”他说。

但许多人认为，关税面临的最大障碍在于，特朗普选择在选民最关心的问题——持续高企的生活成本——亟待解决之际推进关税。“他决定以这种方式征收关税，导致物价飙升……而此时人们对高昂的生活成本已经感到无比愤怒，”格林伯格说道。他补充说，特朗普第一任期内民众对强硬贸易措施的接受度“已被这波新的通胀浪潮彻底颠覆”。

威斯康星州的共和党策略师马克·格劳尔对此表示赞同。他说，关税政策对特朗普和共和党来说行不通，原因很简单：“因为人们把物价上涨的责任归咎于关税政策。”

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比起民意调查，政治家的行动更能反映贸易政治的转变。

不出所料，这些关税政策遭到了爱荷华州民主党参议员候选人乔什·图雷克和堪萨斯州民主党参议员候选人亚当·汉密尔顿，以及内布拉斯加州民粹主义独立候选人丹·奥斯本的强烈批评。由于担心农产品出口会遭到外国报复，高关税在农业州一直不受欢迎。

更能说明问题的是，在制造业强州竞选的民主党人反对特朗普的关税政策，这些州的许多选民长期以来对自由贸易协定持怀疑态度。

例如，在密歇根州，民主党州长候选人乔斯林·本森和参议员候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德都谴责他们的共和党对手支持特朗普的关税政策，尤其是对加拿大征收的新关税。代表弗林特周边一个经济困难的蓝领选区的民主党众议员克里斯汀·麦克唐纳·里维特最近将她所在选区一家半导体制造厂的倒闭归咎于特朗普“混乱的关税制度”和“鲁莽的”贸易政策。“正是这种混乱导致企业倒闭，”她指责道。

正在竞选克利夫兰南部众议院席位的钢铁工人波因德克斯特推出了一则以橄榄球为主题的新广告，承诺“阻止糟糕的贸易协定”。但在一次采访中，波因德克斯特表示，虽然如果他当时在国会，他会投票反对北美自由贸易协定（NAFTA），但“我们看到，全面关税推高了工薪家庭的开支。”

他补充说：“我认为关税在创造公平竞争环境方面非常有用。但对我们美国不生产的东西征收关税毫无意义。”

或许最引人注目的是前俄亥俄州民主党参议员谢罗德·布朗的反应，他今年将与共和党参议员乔恩·赫斯特展开角逐。在所有民主党人中，布朗批评自由贸易的历史最为悠久。然而，他也直言不讳地表示：“这些关税显然没有奏效……世界各地的人们都在为所有东西支付更高的价格，而这批针对加拿大的新关税更是雪上加霜，让原本就灾难性的政策雪上加霜。”

面对这波猛烈抨击，几乎没有共和党人与特朗普决裂（苏珊·柯林斯参议员对加拿大关税的谨慎批评是个例外）。众议院和参议院的绝大多数共和党人都多次投票支持这些关税。“瞧，这些关税正在发挥作用，”堪萨斯州共和党参议员罗杰·马歇尔本月在与汉密尔顿的一场激烈辩论中，面对震耳欲聋的嘘声坚持说道。

托内尔森也认为，“从经济角度来看，情况进展得非常好。”他指出，特朗普第二任期内制造业总产出有所增长。但这一水平仍低于特朗普第一任期和奥巴马第二任期的某些时期。

无论如何，更具政治意义的衡量标准是制造业的就业人数。联邦统计数据显示，尽管近几个月有所增长，但目前制造业就业人数（1263.8万人）略低于特朗普重返总统职位时的水平（1267.3万人）。这仅占所有劳动者的约7.5%。事实上，如今的制造业就业人数仅略高于特朗普2017年首次就任总统时的水平。“即使是那些（起初）表示‘我想给他一次机会’的人，现在也会说‘这根本行不通’，”美国桥梁组织（American Bridge）付费媒体和合作关系主管伊娃·肯普（Eva Kemp）说道。该组织是一个与民主党结盟、专注于工薪阶层选民的团体。

这些就业数据揭示了一个更深层次的脆弱性。对特朗普关税政策的强烈反对表明，保护主义议程面临着赢家和输家之间根本性的不匹配。特朗普关税政策最好的结果或许是最终能增加几十万个制造业就业岗位。但未来可能获得这些岗位的人数，与如今支付更高价格的人数相比，永远微不足道。“即便这样做绝对正确，也很难说服那些已经意识到前期成本的人，”布鲁金斯学会高级研究员、长期担任民主党政策分析师的威廉·加尔斯顿说道。

即便特朗普下台，民主党人似乎也不太可能重拾奥巴马/克林顿时期对自由贸易协定的热情。但正如加尔斯顿所说，在关税问题上，下一任民主党总统很可能会用手术刀取代特朗普的“大锤”。更大的问题或许在于，如果特朗普的关税政策导致一些共和党国会议员在11月的大选中丢掉饭碗，那么在特朗普执政期间共和党内部兴起的保护主义浪潮是否会开始消退。