More than 9-in-10 conservatives support placing reciprocal tariffs on foreign imports to protect American workers and their jobs, a new poll reveals.
The latest Harvard-Harris poll found that despite the corporate donor class’s bipartisan support for endless free trade, American voters overall — and specifically conservatives, Republican voters, and President Trump supporters — are vastly supportive of imposing reciprocal tariffs on foreign imports.
Overall, about 80 percent of voters said they support Reps. Sean Duffy (R-WI) and Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) “U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act” which would allow the president to impose the same tariff on a foreign import that another country has imposed on the same product from the U.S.
About 91 percent of conservatives, 88 percent of Republicans, and 90 percent of Trump supporters said they support reciprocal tariffs to protect American jobs and U.S. workers.
Across party lines, reciprocal tariffs are extremely popular with voters. Roughly 75 percent of Democrats and 77 percent of swing voters said they supported putting tariffs on foreign imports at the same rate other countries put tariffs on U.S. goods.
The reciprocal tariff policy is also supported across racial lines, with 83 percent of white Americans, 75 percent of black Americans, and more than 70 percent of Hispanic voters supporting the protective initiative.
The pro-tariff views of the American electorate are in stark contrast to the billionaire donor class, which favors a global open markets policy of free trade that outsources American jobs to foreign countries as a result.
Specifically, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has attempted to tank the passage of the Reciprocal Trade Act and has united with the rest of the business lobby and Republican lawmakers to strip Trump of his tariff powers. Meanwhile, there is little to no support for the donor class’s preferred economic libertarian agenda.
The outsourcing and offshoring of American jobs to foreign countries is a business model that has been used by multinational corporations with little to no government repercussions. Corporations like General Motors, AT&T, Harley-Davidson, Ralph Lauren, Nike, Verizon, Dexcom, and IBM have all laid off Americans in order to send their jobs overseas to countries like China, India, and the Philippines.
Since the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) enactment, five million American manufacturing jobs have been eliminated from the American economy. The vast elimination of working and middle-class jobs and depressed U.S. wages due to NAFTA has coincided with a nearly 600 percent increase in trade deficits.
One former steel town in West Virginia lost 94 percent of its steel jobs because of NAFTA, with nearly 10,000 workers in the town being displaced from the steel industry.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.