One Capi­tol Hill Dem Sees Promise In Trump’s ‘Lib­er­a­tion Day’ Tar­iffs

One Demo­c­rat in Con­gress broke ranks to offer praise of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s “Lib­er­a­tion Day” tar­iffs.

Rep. Jared Gold­en (D‑ME), who hails from a hot­ly-con­test­ed dis­trict and has a track record of coop­er­at­ing with Repub­li­cans, endorsed the 10% base­line in the new tar­iff plan. The low­er-end rate match­es the one Gold­en put for­ward in a bill ear­li­er this year, the con­gress­man not­ed.

“Pres­i­dent Trump has intro­duced a num­ber of new tar­iff poli­cies, and I and my team are already dig­ging into the details. I’ll have more to say on the specifics in the next few days,” Gold­en said in a state­ment.

“What I can say now is I’m pleased the pres­i­dent is build­ing his tar­iff agen­da on the foun­da­tion of a uni­ver­sal 10 per­cent tar­iff like the one I pro­posed in the BUILT USA Act,” he added. “This ring fence around the Amer­i­can econ­o­my is a good start to eras­ing our unsus­tain­able trade deficits.”

Many con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats have spent the past day crit­i­ciz­ing the new tar­iffs, which impose rates up to 50% on imports from dozens of coun­tries.

“Trump’s tar­iffs are one of the dumb­est deci­sions he has ever made as president—and that’s say­ing some­thing,” Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑NY) said in a post on X.

Some law­mak­ers on Capi­tol Hill have even tak­en steps toward rein­ing in Trump’s tar­iffs, although these efforts also face chal­lenges.

Tak­ing a more con­struc­tive approach, Gold­en offered to assist the Trump admin­is­tra­tion while agree­ing with the president’s stance that decades of unfair trade prac­tices have harmed the Unit­ed States indus­tri­al base and Amer­i­can work­ers.

“I’m eager to work with the pres­i­dent to fix the bro­ken ‘free trade’ sys­tem that made multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions rich but ruined man­u­fac­tur­ing com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try,” he said. “But tar­iffs must be paired with poli­cies that pri­or­i­tize Amer­i­can fam­i­lies’ pros­per­i­ty.”

Gold­en also pushed for an approach that “ben­e­fits work­ing peo­ple” and rene­go­ti­at­ing trade deals like the Unit­ed States-Mex­i­co-Cana­da Agree­ment (USMCA), which Trump signed into law in 2018, “to sup­port the Amer­i­cans who are ready to ramp up pro­duc­tion and sup­port the rebuild­ing of our mid­dle class — like the sawmills, pro­cess­ing plants, fish­er­men and farm­ers in the com­mu­ni­ties” he rep­re­sents.