GOP lawmakers push for tariffs tailored to help home-state firms

The rank-and-file GOP lawmakers’ entreaties, which often present trade actions shoring up favored manufacturers as a winning tactic for midterm elections, bolster the political case for broadening US tariffs. 

Trump announced two sweeping expansions of trade barriers in recent days, on Tuesday wideningsteel and aluminum tariffs to include more than 400 types of items that contain the metals. On Friday, he announced a trade investigation into furniture imports, which he said would lead to new tariffs within 50 days.

In a social media post announcing the furniture trade action, he cited the boost it would provide to manufacturers in North Carolina and Michigan, two states with potentially pivotal Senate races next year.

Read more: Trump Announces Furniture Imports Probe, Setting Up Tariffs

More than a dozen Republican lawmakers have pushed for fresh or higher tariffs to protect local industries. Several of the lawmakers said Trump granted their requests or said White House officials signaled they would approve the asks. 

Republican Senator Bernie Moreno pressed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to expand steel tariffs to include steel-based products like washing machines and refrigerators. The administration moved in June to impose duties on home appliances based on their steel content, benefiting companies including Whirlpool Corp., which has five manufacturing plants in Moreno’s home state of Ohio.

Representative Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican, pushed the administration to raise tariffs on electrical steel laminations and cores on behalf of Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., an effort to protect a manufacturing facility in his district. 

The items were included in the broader tariffs on products made from steel and aluminum that the administration announced in a notice posted Tuesday.

Read more: Trump Widens Metal Tariffs to Target Baby Gear, Motorcycles

Spokespeople for the White House and US Commerce Department didn’t respond to requests for comment on the role lawmakers’ requests played in the tariff decisions.

In the protectionist lobbying by Trump allies, tariffs are cast as the economic savior for struggling local industries and political boost for the GOP. It’s a stark example of how to successfully lobby in today’s murky trade environment, even as Trump has openly claimed that his unpredictability gives him leverage.

The tariff decisions suggest the White House is open to input on the trade matters from outsiders friendly to the administration. Trump’s announcements on trade deals regularly arrived in the form of letters posted to trading partners on social media, excluding Congress from direct involvement in negotiations. 

Senator Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, said before Trump’s furniture trade action was announced that the White House has been receptive to his lobbying for a tariff of at least 60% on wood cabinets — echoing local manufacturers’ pleas. 

Tuberville said he expects the administration ultimately will fulfill the request, though it wasn’t immediately clear whether the furniture trade probe will lead to tariffs on wood cabinets. 

Cabinet makers were “about to go under” during Trump’s first term and he saved them, Tuberville said in a July interview. “He’s doing the same thing now.” 

Republican Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina and Republican Senator Katie Britt of Alabama are among other lawmakers pushing for tariffs on products made of wood. Some local manufacturers in their states want a duty of at least 100% on cabinets.

The lawmakers’ lobbying doesn’t occur in a vacuum. They’re often relaying requests from companies and trade groups that also have their own connections with the Trump administration.

Stephen Vaughn, a senior trade adviser during Trump’s first term, represented Cleveland-Cliffs in the company’s efforts to secure the tariffs on products made from steel. 

Cleveland-Cliffs chief executive officer Lourenco Goncalves praised the expansion of tariffs. The action “gives us certainty that the American domestic market will not be undercut by unfairly traded steel embedded in derivative products,” he said. 

Lobbying is a bipartisan act and occurs during every presidency, but these efforts are different because of Trump’s emphasis on personal relationships, according to Matthew Foster, a professional lecturer at American University’s School of Public Affairs. 

Trump sometimes amplifies the positions of the last person he’s talked to, which explains how his close allies could benefit when they ask for favors, he added.

It’s all about having an advocate with a history of access to the president to get the issue at hand through the door, said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Under Trump, that’s the normal way of doing business, he added.

Moreno, an Ohio Republican, is an active member in the president’s inner circle. The freshman senator said he talks to the president once a week, often reiterating his desire for Trump to force out Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.  

Moreno praised Lutnick for understanding business demands, touting the need to protect Whirlpool from cheaper imported steel. 

“The reality is Whirlpool Corporation, which has a massive presence in Ohio, is the last appliance manufacturer in America,” Moreno said in an interview, adding that the Chinese are “interested in building industries that will dominate the world and crush American companies. We can’t allow them to do that.”

The lawmakers efforts on behalf of tariffs offer a clear potential political benefit: a message to voters that their manufacturing jobs will be protected. But they also threaten to raise the cost of living for consumers.

The tariffs “may work politically, but they may not work economically, and those are two different fields,” Hufbauer said.

A sizable bloc of Trump voters have reservations about the president’s tariffs. About one in four self-identified Trump voters said they thought the tariffs were hurting rather than helping the US in negotiating better trade deals, according to a Politico-Morning Consult poll in July. 

Retaliatory tariffs during Trump’s first term prompted domestic turmoil for some key industries in Republican-lean states, including Kentucky bourbon and Wisconsin-based Harley-Davidson motorcycles. That’s prompted Republican senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul to publicly oppose the trade war as harmful to their constituents.