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 Minority 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.
