2020 presidential candidates on tariffs

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Presidential election
Donald Trump

Joe Biden

Howie Hawkins

Jo Jorgensen

This page includes statements from the 2020 presidential candidates on tariffs. These statements were compiled from each candidate's official campaign website, editorials, speeches, and interviews. Click the following links for policy statements about related issues: trade and NAFTA and USMCA.

The candidates featured on this page are the 2020 presidential nominees from the Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, and Green parties.

Donald Trump
Joe Biden
Howie Hawkins
Jo Jorgensen

Tariffs

Republican candidates

Donald Trump

Donald Trump's campaign website says, "The President exercised his authority to impose a 25 percent global tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent global tariff on aluminum imports in order to protect our national security. The tariffs on steel and aluminum will reduce imports to levels needed for domestic industries to achieve long-term viability. In January 2017, the President announced new safeguard tariffs on imported large residential washing machines and solar cells. In response to China’s rampant trade cheating, the Trump Administration has placed 25 percent tariffs on approximately $250 billion worth of products that are supported by China’s unfair industrial policies." ^{[source, as of 2020-06-22]}

Mark Sanford

Mark Sanford's campaign website says, "I also believe that the international trading system, created after World War Two, vital to America’s foreign policy. In this light, stability and predictability are important. Friends and foes alike need to have a sense of what America will do next. Alliances and investments are not made without predictability. We are not getting this from the White House and I believe the increasing talks of tariffs, and the seemingly daily changes of presidential perspective are undermining our standing in the world." ^{[source, as of 2019-09-10]}

Joe Walsh

In an op-ed about Donald Trump published in The New York Times, Walsh wrote, "He abuses the Constitution for his narcissistic trade war. In private, most congressional Republicans oppose the trade war, but they don’t say anything publicly. But think about this: Mr. Trump’s tariffs are a tax increase on middle-class Americans and are devastating to our farmers" ^{[source, as of 2019-08-14]}

Bill Weld

Bill Weld said in a speech, "On the international front, the United States should return to a regime of free trade rather than having constant recourse to tariffs. Mr. Smoot and Mr. Hawley tried tariffs in June, 1930, and fanned the flames of the Great Depression." ^{[source, as of 2019-02-15]}

Democratic candidates

Joe Biden

Joe Biden's campaign website says about tariffs: "America’s farmers and rural communities have paid a heavy price for President Trump’s tariffs. While Trump is pursuing a damaging and erratic trade war without any real strategy, President Biden will stand up to China by working with our allies to negotiate from the strongest possible position. And, he’ll make sure our trade policy works for American farmers. As the U.S. takes steps to make domestic polluters bear the full cost of their carbon pollution, the Biden Administration will impose carbon tariffs, fees, or quotas on carbon-intensive goods from countries that are failing to meet their climate and environmental obligations." ^{[source, as of 2019-08-20]}

Michael Bloomberg

Mike Bloomberg said in a speech, "Spreading the benefits of trade more widely is part of a bigger economic question: how do we promote growth that is inclusive, sustainable, and fair? And how do we address people’s real fears about the future? My friend Tom Friedman at The New York Times has a smart way of thinking about these issues. He once wrote: ‘The best ways to manage the ups and downs of trade is to strengthen your floors, not raise your walls or build ceilings.’ In other words the answer isn't to build walls along borders or around industries, through tariffs." ^{[source, as of 2019-01-15]}

Cory Booker

Cory Booker's campaign website did not include a statement about tariffs.

In an interview with WBUR, Cory Booker said "This president has literally said to us, 'We're going to take on China. At the same time, we're going to put tariffs on our allies as well.' So we've used a national security waiver to put tariffs on Canada...But the reality is Canada's not our enemy. We need to be uniting with others in common cause against China. People who have our same values and believe in the same rules. And if I'm going to take on China, I'm going to take it on with our allies who represent more than half of our global economy, and we're going to win that fight." ^{[source, as of 2019-07-17]}

Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg said of the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese goods, "We've got to recognize that the China challenge really is a serious one. This is not something to dismiss or wave away. And if you look at what China is doing, they're using technology for the perfection of dictatorship. But their fundamental economic model isn't going to change because of some tariffs. I live in the industrial Midwest. Folks who aren't in the shadow of a factory are somewhere near a soy field where I live. And manufacturers, and especially soy farmers, are hurting. Tariffs are taxes. And Americans are going to pay on average $800 more a year because of these tariffs." ^{[source, as of 2019-06-27]}

Julián Castro

Julián Castro's camapign website did not include a position on tariffs. In an interview with CNN, Castro said he opposed a tariff on Mexico that Trump said he would impose if Mexico did not increase immigration enforcement efforts.

Castro said in the interview, "This is grade-A dumb in terms of ideas. It's not connected to trying to get Mexico to do anything. It's already estimated that this 5 percent tariff to begin with that he wants to impose on Mexico would cost 400,000 jobs nationwide, and 100,000 of those would be in my home state of Texas. This is the worst possible way to try and go about partnering with Mexico to get them to do anything. In fact, it's only going to hurt the United States." ^{[source, as of 2019-06-04]}

Tulsi Gabbard

Tulsi Gabbard tweeted, "Trump’s trade-war against China has damaged, not helped, our economy, has undermined our efforts to denuclearize North Korea, and has strengthened the hand of Chinese anti-American militarists." ^{[source, as of 2019-02-05]}

Kamala D. Harris

Kamala Harris said at the California Democratic Party annual convention that the Trump administration's tariffs were a "trade tax." She continued, "I like to call it Trump’s trade tax. And his trade tax is taking $1.4 billion out of working people’s pockets every month." ^{[source, as of 2019-06-01]}

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar's campaign website did not include a statement on tariffs. In an interview on CBS News, Amy Klobuchar said, "You can use tariffs, but not the way this president has been using tariffs. He's been using them like a meat cleaver or maybe the better word is a tweet cleaver. And when you look at what he's done just on August 1st he announced three hundred billion goods, more tariffs. Then on August 13th they reversed it. Then on August 20th they said they were going to do taxes because of the fears of recession they were going to reduce taxes which of course would only add more to the debt that he's created. And then the next day they reversed that." ^{[source, as of 2019-08-25]}

Beto O'Rourke

Beto O'Rourke wrote in a Medium post, "Beto recognizes that targeted tariffs are a tool that may sometimes be necessary, but they must not be used as a threat to drive anti-immigrant agendas or in a way that causes further pain to American businesses and workers. Trump started his trade war with China to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, but the deficit is rising, not shrinking. Auto plants have been closing, not opening. Manufacturing activity has declined. And as the U.S. may now be headed for a recession, it has become increasingly clear that tariffs are not part of a larger strategy, but rather part of a pattern of conducting foreign policy by tweet. As President, Beto will: Suspend Trump’s tariffs immediately. On day one, Beto will end the trade war with China by eliminating the Trump tariffs. In exchange, China would revoke its retaliatory tariffs on American products like soybeans, beef, cars, and planes." ^{[source, as of 2019-08-29]}

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders campaign website criticizes the Trump administration's tariff policy, saying, "Despite the president’s tough rhetoric and haphazard tariffs, under Trump, we now have a record-breaking $890 billion annual trade deficit in goods." ^{[source, as of 2019-08-23]}

Thomas Steyer

Tom Steyer tweeted about the Trump administration's tariff policy, "That’s not how tariffs work, and taxpayers are not your piggy bank. American workers — like the farmers you’re bailing out today — are suffering from your doomed policy." ^{[source, as of 2018-07-24]}

Elizabeth Warren

In a plan published online, Elizabeth Warren said, "Unlike Trump, while I think tariffs are an important tool, they are not by themselves a long-term solution to our failed trade agenda and must be part of a broader strategy that this Administration clearly lacks."

Warren also said, "For decades, trade deals have squeezed family farmers, with Black farmers losing their land particularly quickly. Between the trade fights incited by Trump’s haphazard tariffs and a series of natural disasters, America’s farmers are now facing the worst crisis in almost 40 years. They are also facing unprecedented levels of uncertainty and instability. Trump’s tariffs have reduced crop prices, threatened farmers already operating on razor-thin margins, and opened up new non-American markets against which our farmers are now forced to compete." ^{[source, as of 2019-07-29]}

Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang said in an interview, "I would not go down the tariff road. I was just in Iowa and there are farmers who are furious that they spent six years building up relationships that now have been thrown aside because their goods are not competitive because of Chinese tariffs that have been enacted in response to our tariffs. This is going to hurt workers and businesses on both sides. There are legitimate imbalances with the China-U.S. trade relationship that we should be working to address. But the tariffs are going to be hurtful to people here in America and people who build relationships for years trying to grow their their exports abroad." ^{[source, as of 2019-05-28]}

Green candidates

Howie Hawkins

Howie Hawkins' campaign website says, "International borders should be authentic fair-trade zones where people are free to travel across borders for work, shopping, recreation, and residence." ^{[source, as of 2020-07-09]}

Libertarian candidates

Jo Jorgensen

Jo Jorgensen's campaign website says she opposes adding or increasing tariffs on products imported into the country. ^{[source, as of 2020-07-28]}

Other policy pages

Abortion

2020 presidential candidates on abortion

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2020 presidential candidates on gun regulation

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Trade

Footnotes