President Donald Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to trade policy has given Democrats an opening. They’re just not sure how to seize it.
Nowhere is their conflicted response more evident than in the upper Midwest, where Trump’s new tariffs on Canada, Mexico, China and other major trading partners promise both possible upsides but also tremendous risks for automakers and other manufacturers that are central to the regional economy.
Democrats from states like Michigan and Pennsylvania are trying to thread the needle by condemning Trump’s erratic policy pronouncements and attacks on allies like Canada, while not criticizing tariffs or protectionist policies.
“It’s indiscriminate tariffs that are not based on anything — that’s the problem,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) “I’ve supported tariffs. I supported Joe Biden’s 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles from China.”
That’s a balance that former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both tried to strike in the 2024 election — with little success. And it remains a point of tension for Democrats on Capitol Hill and back home in the Rust Belt, as they fumble for an economic message that strikes a chord with working-class voters. Resolving that tension will be key to improving their chances in 2026.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, is already trying to shore up support for its trade policies in states like Michigan, touting the investments and manufacturing jobs they say will come from Trump’s use of tariffs. Vice President JD Vance will tour a Michigan plastics manufacturer on Friday in an effort to highlight what they say is an “industrial resurgence.”
Democrats in Michigan are well aware of how much is at stake in their party’s response to Trump’s trade policies. A swing state with a Democratic governor, it narrowly supported Trump for president and Democrat Elissa Slotkin for Senate in November. It has lost around 40 percent of its auto manufacturing jobs since 1995 but does billions in trade with Canada and Mexico, largely fueled by the auto industry. According to an analysis from University of Calgary economics professor Trevor Tombe, Michigan and its neighbors will take the biggest economic hit of all 50 states from Canada’s trade retaliation for the new U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs.
Michigan Democrats are attempting to balance those realities — distancing themselves from the short-term economic pain that could come with the tariffs, while craving the long-term gain that would help spur manufacturing across the country.
“There’s a false choice that it has to be this or the status quo,” said Michigan state Rep. Ranjeev Puri, a Democrat from the western suburbs of Detroit. “We’re coming off a robust election that engaged millions and millions of Michiganders and the message was very clear that the economic message was the driver for that election. Not many people were happy with the status quo and wanted to see some change.”
“But I don’t know if crippling our auto industry, getting a tax levied on lumber to make housing more expensive, having China … levy new tariffs on chicken, wheat and corn causing our Michigan farmers to lose orders on those products is the economic message they signed up for.”
The Biden administration attempted to craft an economic agenda that took a more surgical approach to help protect auto workers from foreign competition. He proposed high tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles on the campaign trail, while his administration maintained the Trump administration’s protectionist tariffs on China and passed spending bills filled with money for domestic electric vehicle manufacturing and incentives for companies to build U.S. factories.
But the effort failed to stick with voters — as the slow progress of government intervention was overtaken by concern from voters over high inflation that raised the cost of groceries and a generally pessimistic view of the economy.
Trump, instead, promised drastic action. And drastic it has been — in less than two months in office, his administration has begun piling steep tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico, with promises of much more down the line. A 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum — backed by the domestic steel industry and steelworkers union — went into effect Wednesday.
The tariffs have become a wrench in a heavily integrated North American supply chain — one encouraged by the free trade agreements that have defined trade policy for decades — where even toothpick production involves sending materials across the border.
The auto industry is taking full advantage of that supply chain, with a complex assortment of factories that stretch across North America. Parts sometimes cross the border several times before they finally make it into a vehicle. The industry has warned that tariffs on autos and auto parts from Mexico and Canada, if they go into effect next month, could increase car prices by up to $10,000, sending a ripple effect through the auto manufacturing industry.
Here is the boilerplate warning from the industry: if producing cars gets more expensive, then cars become more expensive. If cars become more expensive, fewer people buy cars. If fewer people buy cars, then the auto industry will make fewer cars. If they are making fewer cars, then the people making the cars will lose their jobs.
The auto companies won a quick victory over Trump’s tariffs last week, when negotiations with the big three American automakers — Ford, GM and Stellantis — helped secure a temporary pause on the 25 percent tariffs Trump imposed on goods from Canada and Mexico just a day after they went into effect.
But the powerful United Auto Workers union, which backed Harris in the November election, was supportive of the Canada and Mexico tariffs when they kicked in last week. In a statement, the group said it was working with the Trump administration to find an approach that would help the auto industry and pinned the blame on auto companies for “driving a non-stop race to the bottom.”
“Tariffs are a powerful tool in the toolbox for undoing the injustice of anti-worker trade deals,” the United Auto Workers said in response to Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico. “We are glad to see an American president take aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster that has dropped like a bomb on the working class.”
Markets, however, are unsettled — the S&P 500 has lost $4 trillion value in the past month — and so are consumers. A new CNN/SSRS poll released Wednesday morning found that 56 percent of adults now disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, to only 44 percent who approve, a reversal from his first term.
Democrats have seized on those indicators to attack Trump and blame him for stubbornly high prices, flipping the script from the 2024 election, when Biden and Democrats were weighed down by inflation concerns. But the party’s message has been less clear in terms of trade policy.
Asked in an interview Tuesday on MSNBC, if Trump’s pledge that tariffs could bring back manufacturing jobs was a “false promise,” Sen. Jon Fetterman (D-Pa.) replied, “No.”
But then he proceeded to criticize Trump for focusing on North American neighbors Canada and Mexico, rather than the country’s real “enemies.”
“We can have disagreements but we don’t have to, again, punch our allies in the mouth because I don’t think that’s projecting strength. I think that’s projecting chaos or instability. And the markets don’t like that,” Fetterman said. “The American business community, they want stability, you know? No one will vote for chaos.”
But former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) warned that rural voters are giving Trump wide latitude, on the premise that he’s a dealmaker who is using the tariffs as a negotiating tactic that will eventually boost the U.S. economy.
“The Democratic Party has to connect the dots,” said Heitkamp, who is now director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. “They cannot just simply say, ‘oh, you know, it’s chaos,’ you know, flooding the zone, and look what’s happening. They have to basically present the facts.”
Publicly, Trump has waved off criticism of his tariffs from Democrats, business leaders and even some in his own party, holding fast to the promise that tariffs will set the economy soaring down the road — even as he refused to rule out a recession in the short term.
When asked about the risk that tariffs will drive up prices for everyday goods like cars and tomatoes, the administration instead points to a list of businesses that have pledged to build in the U.S. to avoid tariffs, including auto manufacturers like Honda, Hyundai and Volkswagen.
“I would just say this, the people in Canada or Mexico, they’re going to build car plants, the people that are doing them, are much better off building here,” Trump told reporters last week. “Because we have the market where they sell the most. And so I think it’s going to be very exciting, very exciting for the automobile companies.”
But he has also shown signs that he is sensitive to the sagging markets — a metric of economic performance he repeatedly highlighted in his first term. Just two days after announcing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Trump toned them down by exempting products that are compliant under the three countries’ free trade deal.
He and his administration are also trying to prepare voters for some short-term economic pain. “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued in a speech at the Economic Club of New York last week. He also warned on CNBC’ Squawk Box on Friday that the economy may need to go through “a detox period.”
Rust Belt Republicans on Capitol Hill are echoing that rhetoric.
“I think there would definitely be an adjustment period,” said Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.). “And I believe in the ingenuity of the American people and the creativity and hard work ethic. And once people know the rules, we can compete with anyone.”
Even if Trump is able to successfully convince auto manufacturers to build more plants in America, there is no guarantee that they will go to Michigan, however.
Cities and states participate in a highly competitive market to lure auto manufacturers to town – one that often involves tax breaks from both city and state government on things like a plant’s energy bill.
But as Lansing Mayor Andy Schor pointed out in an interview, not only does his city have to compete with other Michigan and Rust Belt cities, it also has to compete with southern states like Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama — which all have so-called “right-to-work” laws that undercut labor unions.
“At no point do I think that putting a 25 percent tariff on Canada, making cars more expensive for people to buy, is going to result in GM building a new $2.7 to $3 billion plant here because they can’t get their parts, or they can’t get a specific car across without an extra $10,000,” said Schor, a Democrat. “I just don’t think the numbers work out.”
In the meantime, the auto industry is still attempting to fend off the next few rounds of tariffs. Glenn Stevens, the executive director of MichAuto, a group that advocates for the auto industry, said he was still working on educating people in the White House about the complexity of the auto supply chain — and why it will take more than 30 days to move manufacturing.
“We’d like to deal with zero short-term pain,” Stevens said. “I mean, we really would. The industry is a tough enough industry to compete in, here in this market, let alone globally.”
Liz Crampton contributed to this report.
