In the two years since President Donald Trump unveiled a slew of aggressive tariffs on America’s global trading partners, the prospect of stock market backlash has been the biggest restraint on his agenda. The midterms may have just changed that.
Despite a steady drumbeat of polls showing Americans’ disdain for Trump’s tariffs, Republican lawmakers largely avoided publicly challenging the president’s trade agenda, seeing the political fallout from standing in his way as too great. But last week’s election results suggest there may also be a steep political price for that loyalty.
Democrats notched significant victories at the polls, flipping seats in historically Republican states where voters have been hit hard by Trump’s tariffs, from agriculture-heavy states like Iowa and Kansas to northern border states such as Maine and Michigan.
“Many Republicans were kind of whistling by the political graveyard by ignoring the tariff issue, but now it’s come front and center,” Brian Darling, a Republican strategist and former counsel to Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said. “Republicans are going to have to take a hard look in the mirror and take a second look at their position on tariffs.”
Opposition to tariffs has traditionally been a cornerstone of Republican economic policy, while Democrats have more often backed tariffs as a way to protect domestic industries and workers, particularly unionized ones. That made Trump’s sweeping use of tariffs, a cornerstone of his overarching agenda, a particularly uncomfortable departure for some Republicans, particularly those up for re-election who feared defeat in primaries if they crossed Trump.
While one of Trump’s stated goals in imposing higher tariffs was to boost US-based employment, many employers have been reluctant to take on more workers , given the uncertain trade environment with Trump often altering policies.
The impact on prices, by contrast, has been more direct. Tariffs have pushed up the cost of not only imported goods but also products made in the United States. About 26% of tariff increases are ultimately passed on to consumers, according to a September study by New York Federal Reserve economists.
Nationally, two-thirds of voters said Trump’s tariffs hurt the national economy, according to nationwide results of CNN’s Voter Poll . Nearly the same share said they hurt the local economy, too.
“Any member who is up for re-election in 2028 has got to be looking at what happened here in 2026 and wondering if they need to be more active opposing the tariffs so that this doesn’t become an attack line against them in 2028,” said Brian Pomper, co-leader of lobbying at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Whether any newfound opposition can translate into meaningful change, however, is another question.
Even if Republicans are willing to risk Trump’s ire, they face another major obstacle: his veto power.
Congress could repeal the tariffs or restrict the president’s tariff authority with a simple majority in both chambers. But if the president vetoed the measure, lawmakers would need two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate to override him.
With one Senate race and 12 House races still uncalled as of Thursday afternoon, Democrats and their independent allies hold 55 of the Senate’s 100 seats and 255 of the House’s 435 seats. Even if they voted unanimously, they would still need at least 12 Republicans in the Senate and 35 in the House to override a presidential veto.
Without that level of Republican support, Trump could veto legislation seeking to rein in his tariff authority, a prospect he has made clear he is prepared to embrace.
“I’ll become Mr. Veto,” Trump said in an Election Day interview on the New York Post’s Pod Force One before results came in.
Still, even without enough votes to override a veto, growing Republican support for rolling back certain tariffs could give Trump an incentive to retreat on his own to avoid a fight with his party, Darling said.
The White House, meanwhile, has signaled it has no plans to put the brakes on Trump’s tariff agenda.
“Putting a stop to American workers, farmers, and businesses being ripped off by lopsided trade agreements has been a key foundation of President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement since he first came down the escalator. President Trump will never waver from putting Americans and America First,” White House spokesman Matthew Middleton told CNN in a statement.
Still, Trump has shown some willingness to rein in certain tariffs. After markets plunged following his April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, he delayed many of the sweeping duties just a week later.
He also showed signs of restraint ahead of the midterms: Less than two weeks before Election Day, he exempted products, including plywood and packaging materials, from the 50% duties on Canadian goods he imposed over the summer. That followed exemptions for road salt and cement . In both instances, now-defeated Republican Sen. Susan Collins took credit for securing the relief.
Over the summer, Trump also threatened to double tariffs on Canadian cars to 50% starting January 1. A White House official told CNN that the administration is actively negotiating with Canada to finalize new trade terms, which could include revising the auto duties.
Democrats, meanwhile, have made clear that rolling back Trump’s tariffs will be a top priority when the new Congress convenes at the start of 2027, with Canadian tariffs emerging as an early target.
House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who is expected to become the next Speaker of the House , said immediately after the elections that repealing Trump’s tariffs should be among the party’s top priorities in its first 100 days.
But Democrats may not be entirely unified in that effort, particularly when it comes to tariffs that enjoy support from organized labor. “There are still going to be some Democrats that are still kind of old-school labor union Dems that don’t go along with this,” said Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade at the Libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
Steel and aluminum tariffs , which Trump raised to 50%, could prove especially difficult to roll back given the strong backing they have among unions, he added.
The Canadian tariffs could offer the clearest starting point for building bipartisan support. Trump imposed them under a Great Depression-era law that allows a president to set tariffs up to 50% when another country discriminates against American goods. No other president has applied it that way, though, and it is currently facing legal challenges.
Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, who is expected to take over as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in January, is leading the push in the Senate and has made the Canadian tariffs a focus.
“Voters gave Democrats a mandate to rein in Trump’s tariffs that are raising prices all across our country, and to stop the president from abusing our trade laws in the future,” Wyden told CNN in a statement.
“It is my hope that Republicans will acknowledge the election results and join Democrats to roll back Trump’s tariffs and lower prices for American families. If not, it will be crystal clear whose side Republicans are on,” he said.
Some Republicans have already begun acknowledging that the party’s approach to tariffs may have come at a political cost.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, whose state saw major Democratic gains in last week’s elections, pointed to voters’ frustration with the cost of living as a key factor behind the results.
“Tariffs have made everything too expensive,” Cruz wrote in a post on X last week. “Understandably, people were pissed off, and elected Republicans didn’t do enough to address their very real pain,” he later added.
But Cruz has repeatedly backed Trump’s tariff agenda in Congress. He voted against all five Senate resolutions in 2025 seeking to repeal the president’s tariffs, including measures targeting duties on Canada, Brazil and dozens of other countries.
Republican Rep. Don Bacon, who is retiring, has been more willing to break with the president. He was among six Republicans who joined Democrats in February to vote to repeal Trump’s tariffs on Canada, in a rare rebuke of the president’s trade agenda.
At the time, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Trump was “not upset” with Republicans who voted against the tariffs.
“He understands what’s going on. It’s not going to affect or change his policy. He can veto these things if they come to it,” Johnson told CNN.
Trump, however, subsequently took to Truth Social to issue a warning to Republicans considering similar defections.
Bacon told CNN he wasn’t sure whether Republicans’ appetite for pushing back against Trump’s trade agenda had grown since the midterms.
“It should,” he said. “Trump’s tariffs killed the GOP this election.”
