The Democrats’ Looming Trade Battle

Democratic candidates are rallying against President Donald Trump’s tariffs in the final days of the midterms. But behind the scenes, cracks over trade policy are starting to emerge within the party.

Campaigns from New Hampshire to Michigan to California are running ads condemning the president’s sweeping use of tariffs around the world, blaming it for driving up prices and hurting businesses. What they don’t fully show is the extent to which leading Democrats are already jockeying for influence on the issue, with officials from export-dependent states and those with small business ties pushing for a reversal of Trump’s policies while union allies and Rust Belt politicians advocate for a more cautious approach.

The simmering debate over how far to reject Trump’s trade agenda cuts across geography and ideology. It’s likely to bubble into public view in the coming months as Democrats prepare to assume more power in Congress and jump into the wide-open 2028 presidential primary.

The central point of tension, according to interviews with nine current and former Democratic officials, is whether the party should continue to embrace some tariffs to boost manufacturing or seek to lower them across the board as a way to cut costs for consumers and businesses.

Trump’s aggressive — and unpopular — use of tariffs in his second term has given an opening to more trade-friendly Democrats. That includes possible 2028 candidates such as Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who have criticized Trump’s tariffs for hurting businesses in their state, as well as West Coast and Northeast officials with global, service-heavy home state industries. In contrast, Democrats across the Rust Belt such as Senate hopefuls Abdul El-Sayed and Sherrod Brown have defended tariffs as a legitimate trade policy tool — in the right hands.

“There's going to be a lot of debates about this as we move forward,” said Greta Peisch, the Biden-era general counsel for the U.S Trade Representative. “It's really messy right now.”

Trade is poised to be a defining issue for Democrats in the upcoming 2028 campaign cycle, with cost-of-living concerns and fallout from Trump’s tariffs expected to be persistent economic pain points. The outcome holds major implications for the makeup of the Democratic coalition and the direction the party would take the economy — specifically whether to continue the muscular Trump-Biden approach to supporting industries or revive a free trade agenda.

Voters have consistently told pollsters in 2026 that they oppose tariffs and blame them for high costs. An October poll by the Council on Foreign Relations and Morning Consult found Democrats were more likely than Republicans and independents to say that tariffs raise prices and less likely to say they protect manufacturing jobs — breaking with a core belief of the party’s traditional union allies.

“A lot of Democratic politicians haven't actually caught up to where the base is on this … whether it's a legacy of union politics or something like that,” said Jeremiah Johnson, the co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism, a center-left advocacy group. “They don't seem to quite realize how deeply unpopular tariffs are among the base.”

But in Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, home to an influential swath of unionized auto and steelworkers, Democrats continue to back many aspects of the Trump trade agenda, including his tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, as well as on China. As the party has learned in the last two presidential elections, their White House hopes hinge on that “Blue Wall.”

“Some of our more quote-unquote moderate members who represent the industrial Midwest, for example, or even parts of the South, see the value in certain tariffs because it's important for protecting those industries,” said Bharat Ramamurti, who served as deputy director of the White House National Economic Council under President Joe Biden and as a top economic policy adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “Whereas there are some progressives, presumably, that are more focused on cost-of-living issues and think it's important to bring down tariffs.”

In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee El-Sayed has focused on how Trump’s trade war with Canada threatens Michigan’s auto industry, but has also made clear he does not favor a return to free trade. In one TV ad in late September, his campaign hammered Republican opponent Mike Rogers for his past support of NAFTA, the North American free trade deal President Bill Clinton negotiated in the 1990s, and which Trump assailed on his way to the White House in 2016.

“I believe in a system of tariffs that is hooked to an industrial policy that actually makes sense,” El-Sayed said Tuesday at the Detroit Economic Club, suggesting they are necessary to protect and expand Michigan’s economic life blood — the auto industry — and particularly the electric vehicle market.

That thread-the-needle approach to tariffs has been ascendant in the Democratic party since 2016, when Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) pushed both parties to embrace more populist, anti-globalization agendas. Biden continued that turn when he was in the White House, maintaining most of the tariffs imposed by Trump in his first term, while also subsidizing domestic production of semiconductors, electric vehicles and other green technology.

But Trump’s zealous use of tariffs to batter allies and rivals over the past two years, as well as voters’ rising anger over the country's cost of living, have shifted the political calculus. Voters across the political spectrum have grown more negative towards tariffs over the last two years, while nearly 70% of voters in a recent Fox News poll said they disapproved of Trump’s use of the trade tool.

“There's so much more unanimity that what Trump is doing is bad,” said Gabe Horwitz, senior vice president for the economic program at Third Way, a group that advocates for moderate Democratic policies. “I'm always watching to see what these union members are doing because traditionally they would have said one thing, and now they're saying another.”

In New Hampshire, where unemployment is low and service industries like healthcare, tech and tourism are major economic drivers, Democratic Senate candidate Chris Pappas has emphasized how much businesses and workers are hurt by high trade barriers.

The House Democrat has campaigned at a local winery hit by a low tourist season in the lakes region, which he blames on Trump’s trade war with Canada, and a small manufacturing plant affected by higher material and shipping costs impacted by50% tariffs on steel and aluminum. He’s touted his work to promote trade, including legislation to exempt small businesses from Trump tariffs and to secure export markets for the state’s hardwood lumber producers.

“The vast majority of New Hampshire workers work in small businesses and not in gigantic businesses like you see in other states. We don't have an automobile manufacturing facility here, or we don't have a shipyard that's making boats,” said Jim Demers, a Democratic lobbyist in New Hampshire.

Democrats in Congress are hoping to play down such differences if they win control of the House or Senate by focusing on some of Trump’s most universally disliked trade policies — starting with the Canada tariffs.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees trade policy, said in a statement that in addition to repealing those duties, his priority would be reining in Trump’s use of executive power to make trade policy.

Wyden, along with Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the ranking member on House Ways and Means, will be leading Democratic voices on trade in the next Congress. Both have said that tariffs should be a “tool in the toolbox” on economic policy. Neal has traditionally taken a more pro-union approach, while Wyden has backed free-trade agreements and worked to defend his state’s export-driven economy.

Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.) and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a member of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade, have been some of the party’s most vocal members on the issue — but with very different viewpoints. In a New York Times op-ed last year, Deluzio urged Democrats not to abandon tariffs as a tool to help workers, while DelBene said in a statement that she’s focused on finding a bipartisan solution that “lowers prices, supports our economy, and advances our national security interests.”

As long as Trump is president, there is little Democratic lawmakers can do without a veto-proof majority.

“The [2028] primary that we're about to have is going to help hash out some of these disagreements,” Ramamurti said.

Two potential presidential candidates, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, mentioned the tariffs in speeches in New Hampshire this month. Buttigieg blamed the tariffs for higher prices. Newsom used them as a vehicle to talk about Trump’s corruption.

“You're going to have 30 people running for president, and they're really thinking about what should that forward-looking vision of trade be for the Democratic Party,” Horwitz said.