As Democrats push back against the policies of the second Trump administration, they are struggling to convey a clear stance on tariffs, with many walking a political tightrope amid the rapid shifts in President Trump’s trade agenda.
While most Democrats have criticized Mr. Trump’s on-again, off-again approach as “chaotic” and “reckless,” they have displayed little consensus about embracing tariffs themselves as a policy tool.
Their divisions were on display on Sunday morning, as Democratic lawmakers were grilled by talk show hosts about whether their party was taking the right approach by objecting to Mr. Trump’s tariffs while embracing tariffs in principle as a policy tool.
When pressed by NBC’s Kristen Welker, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, denounced Mr. Trump’s trade strategy but declined to weigh in on whether he thought others in his party were taking the right approach by offering a more nuanced criticism. Ms. Welker pointed out that former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had maintained and even expanded some of the tariffs that Mr. Trump enacted in his first term, a move that some progressive Democrats had applauded at the time.
“I just want to, for myself, tell you a full-throated, unequivocal condemnation of the Trump tariffs,” Mr. Booker said, blaming the trade barriers for roiling the economy and tanking Americans’ savings. “It is all just wrong. It should be condemned.”
A few Democrats have even aligned themselves with Mr. Trump’s tariffs. Representative Jared Golden of Maine, a Democrat who has consistently won re-election in a Trump-won district, has embraced a 10 percent blanket tariff on imports and twice introduced a bill that would codify such levies.