Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued rare criticism on Tuesday of a key economic policy that former President Donald Trump has pledged to pursue if he’s elected this November: tariffs.
The top GOP leader was asked by reporters at the Capitol about Trump’s threat this week to impose a 200% tariff on any John Deere equipment that’s manufactured in Mexico, along with the former president’s tariff policies more broadly.
“I’m not a fan of tariffs. They raise the prices for American consumers,” McConnell said. I’m more of a free trade kind of Republican that remembers how many jobs are created by the exports that we engage in, so I’m not a tariff fan.”
Trump has pledged to impose a 10% blanket tariff on all imported goods if elected — and he famously engaged in a trade war with China during his previous administration.
At the same time, Biden has kept many of those tariffs on Chinese goods, and introduced more of his own. Vice President Kamala Harris has suggested that she would take a more targeted approach to tariffs than Trump, and she has likened the former president’s trade proposal to a “Trump Sales Tax.”
Experts have said that Trump’s proposal would likely raise prices, but the former president has disputed this, saying in an April interview with Time that he doesn’t “believe that the costs will go up that much.”
McConnell’s comments signal that Trump will likely face resistance from within his own party on trade if elected this November.
Though the Kentucky senator is set to step down from his post at the end of this Congress, several Republican senators have also pushed back on Trump’s tariff plans.
Skeptics include Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and John Cornyn of Texas, who told Axios last month that they’re skeptical of across-the-board tariffs.
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