Democrats see the economy as one of their strongest arguments against President Donald Trump, and they say that even his broad pause on tariffs won’t dilute their message.
Democrats acknowledge that they have their work cut out for them, but they say they’re still determined to make the case that Trump’s approach to the economy is chaotic and could strain voters’ pockets.
“We’re not out of this yet,” Rep. Maxwell Frost, co-chair of the House Democrats’ messaging arm, told NOTUS. “We’re not going to pat a guy on the back for blowing up a car and then putting some of it back together.”
Frost added that he’s confident voters will buy into Democrats’ message because of Trump’s “volatility and the having no consistency is bad for the people.”
“People still lost money,” he said. “There were people who made rash decisions based on what was going on. People emptied their 401(k)s. People sold everything they had.”
When Trump imposed tariffs on over two dozen countries last week, he gave further evidence that supported Democrats’ favorite talking point: Republicans’ plan for the economy will raise prices. Until Wednesday when Trump issued the 90-day pause on most of those tariffs, economic indicators were on Democrats’ side.
Stock prices instantly plummeted. Billions in public pension funds were wiped out. And carmakers closed factories and laid off workers.
But when Trump reversed course, the stock market made historic gains, even as the U.S. remains locked in a trade war with China (a point that none of the Democrats NOTUS spoke to brought up).
Democrats insist the change in tack by the president hasn’t defanged their message.
Rep. Becca Balint told NOTUS she spoke to constituents who told her they “hate the chaos,” and she argued that Democrats’ message — that the Trump economic agenda is “utter and total incompetence” — remains the same.
“What I’ve heard from my small businesses throughout Vermont is that at this point he’s already wrecked the economy. Nobody can plan. Nobody knows what he’s going to do next,” Balint said. “OK, it’s a pause now and then on some whim he’s going to slap some tariff on some other country or remove something. This actually doesn’t help the situation in the long term.”
Some Democrats cast doubt on how far they can take the fight against Trump’s tariffs when their party is out of power in Washington.
As Rep. Terri Sewell put it, “We’re fighting with both hands behind our backs.”
But the Alabama lawmaker said her party still has to find a way to work around that.
“We have to figure out how we can push back on this,” Sewell said.
Congressional Democrats have been looking for ways to respond since Trump announced tariffs last week on what he dubbed “Liberation Day.” The Senate passed a Democratic-led measure last week to revoke Trump’s tariffs on Canada thanks to some support from Republicans.
Rep. Troy Carter told NOTUS on Monday that he and several other Democrats have begun working on separate legislation to bolster Congress’s power to implement tariffs. He added that he was confident the legislation had a chance of succeeding in the House given that Republicans were openly breaking with Trump on the issue.
“Over the years, Congress has abdicated its authority, and it’s coming home to roost now,” Carter said. “Tariffs, when done properly, can be effective tools. But when done this way they wreak havoc.”
On Tuesday, Rep. Gregory Meeks introduced a resolution to force a House vote on Trump’s tariffs. But by Wednesday, Republicans had added language to a separate bill — that passed along party lines — that would prevent Meeks and other members from forcing votes to repeal Trump’s tariffs.
Meeks told NOTUS that he now plans to file his resolution as a discharge petition, a mechanism he has to wait 30 days to use, but that would bring his bill to the House floor for consideration and require two-thirds majority support to pass. In the meantime, he hopes to convince some Republicans to support it, and so far, he said he’s working on “three or four” in what he described as “a work in progress.”
He added that he’d also support Democratic rallies and town halls where members hone in on their anti-Trump tariffs messaging.
“We’re not letting this go. They can run but they can’t hide,” Meeks said of the Trump administration.
Rep. Steve Horsford, who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which grilled the White House’s top trade negotiator about the tariffs, told NOTUS he plans to write a letter to the Trump administration calling for an investigation into how Trump’s tariffs, and the pause, were implemented. Horsford had complaints about how Trump encouraged users on Truth Social to buy stocks while stock market prices were low and then paused the tariffs without warning, yielding big gains for those who purchased stocks at low prices.
“My underlying question now, after seeing all of this, is, ‘Where is the grift on this?’” Horsford said. “Why did the president issue a post at 9:37 a.m. telling people it’s a great day to buy when the market was down? If this was his plan to put a pause, who knew it? Who did he consult with? How is his trade representative, who should be owning this process, who was testifying at the time, knew nothing about it?”
Reps. Ro Khanna and Jennifer McClellan called for Congress to call in Trump officials for hearings regarding the tariffs, which they are unable to formally do on their own given that their party is in the minority. Khanna specified that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick “needs to be called in.”
“He needs to be replaced,” Khanna told NOTUS.
—
Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.