A majority of voters support the United States placing a ten percent tariff on all imports, a J.L. Partners/Daily Mail.com poll recently found, underscoring the reemergence of tariff popularity with the rise of former President Donald Trump.
Trump often champions America First tariff policy:
- “When companies come in and they dump their products in the United States, they should pay, automatically, let’s say a 10 percent tax,” Trump told Fox Business last year. “I do like the 10 percent for everybody.”
- “I fully believe in them economically when you’re being taken advantage of by other countries,” Trump told CNBC in March.
The poll found significant support for the ten percent tariff:
- 24 percent strongly support
- 30 percent tend to support
- 11 percent tend to oppose
- 6 percent strongly oppose
- 22 percent neither
- 6 percent don’t know
“Voters are not in the detail of the economics. To them, it is instinctive: protecting America and putting up tariffs if other nations do not play fair is a popular proposition,” J.L. Partners’ James Johnson told the Daily Mail.
The poll sampled 1,000 likely voters from March 20-24 with a 3.1 margin of error.
The issue of tariffs is one of the longest-running debates in U.S. history. Tariffs generate revenue for the federal government and encourage domestic production in some industries by acting as a protective barrier against foreign competitors.
According to Douglas A. Irwin’s “Trade Policy in American Economic History,” average tariffs increased to as high as 60 percent before declining to 20 percent between 1790 and 1860. From 1861 to 1933, average tariffs increased to 50 percent. Since 1934, tariffs declined to an average of about 5 percent due to the rise of an idea dubbed “free trade.”
Free trade sidelined tariffs in policy debate until 2016 when Trump campaigned on America First policies that protect American producers.
Some economists believe “free trade” is a radical idea born to profit the global elites.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.