Trade war alarms rural GOP senators
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans expressed growing concern Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China is hurting their constituents in rural America, ratcheting up tension between the White House and Congress on a signature issue.
Some Republican lawmakers, increasingly frustrated with Trump, took the unusual step of openly criticizing a president from their own party.
“I’m not sure if you talk to him face to face, he hears everything you say,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has emerged as one of Trump’s chief critics on trade and who said he planned to write to the president to explain farmers’ concerns.
But faced with the prospect that Trump will continue with his adversarial approach, Republican lawmakers are also looking for ways to provide a taxpayer bailout to farmers, perhaps adding billions of dollars to a disaster bill that has languished in Congress for weeks.
Fueling the concerns on Capitol Hill was the impression that Trump may not have a clear endgame.
“Ultimately, nobody wins a trade war unless there is an agreement at the end, after which tariffs go away,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The president last week more than doubled tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods, provoking China to retaliate with tariffs on U.S. agricultural and other products. Then Trump expanded the trade war further still this week, taking the first steps to putting roughly $300 billion in additional Chinese goods under import levies.
On Tuesday, Trump offered conflicting forecasts of what would happen next, predicting that a deal could be reached in a few weeks but also saying the showdown could last much longer.
In a series of early morning tweets, Trump sought to reassure the public and investors spooked by the stock market’s worst oneday performance in months Monday, saying that he would strike a deal with China “when the time is right.”
But Trump also signaled that he was unsure what might ultimately happen.