Opinion - Why Trump's supporters trust him on tariffs — for now
President Trump recently announced a series of sweeping global tariffs, with rates sometimes shifting by the day. Although the precise timing and extent of these tariffs remain unclear, many experts believe that they could lead to an economic downturn.
In the face of immediate market turmoil, Trump has described these policies as a trade-off of short-term pain for long-term gain. He has asked for the patience of the American public, claiming, 'Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.'
Despite a temporary pause on some of the tariffs, the market turmoil continues. So far, congressional Republicans have been relatively mute about the economic repercussions, betting big that Trump's supporters will trust him, at least in the short term.
Indeed, our research suggests that Republicans might be correct to believe that Trump's base will accept economic pain for the promise of future gain.
This is not the first time that Trump has asked his supporters for patience and broad latitude in trade policy. In 2018, the first 'Trump trade war,' he announced tariffs on China, leading China to retaliate by limiting purchases of agricultural products. Prices for crops like corn and soybeans immediately dropped, leading to a 20 percent increase in farm bankruptcies in 2019 compared to the previous year. Many farmers abandoned the tariffed crops and invested in alternative crops.
Meanwhile, Trump assured farmers, 'We have all the cards, we're going to win.' In polling, farmers expressing support for the president were quite optimistic about the prospect of trade war success.
This was not just talk, as we found when writing a recently published academic article. Using satellite data provided by the Department of Agriculture, we tracked the crop-planting of farmers before and after the start of the trade war. On average, we find that farmers swiftly decreased their planting of tariff-affected crops, such as corn and soybeans. This suggests a risk-averse concern for their bottom line, along with a general belief that the trade war would get worse before it got better.
However, farmers in Trump-supporting areas took a different path. These farmers were much more likely to continue business as usual, planting tariffed crops as if the prices had not changed. This suggests that Trump-supporting farmers believed the president's claims that the trade war would come to a swift end. These business owners were willing to stand by the president in hopes that the short-term pain would indeed yield long-term gains. They were literally willing to bet the farm on it.
If the 2018 trade war is any indication, it is likely that Trump's base is willing to accept some short-term suffering. Recent polls suggest that Republican voters are particularly supportive of Trump's emphasis on imposing tariffs on imported goods, as they believe tariffs will benefit the economy in the long run. Seventy-eight percent of Republican voters favor the tariffs, and more than half believe they will bring prices down. This optimism might provide Trump with some tailwinds in the short run.
However, it remains to be seen how long Republican supporters' patience will last. Bipartisan groups in both chambers of Congress have introduced bills to rein in presidential tariff power, although Republican leadership eventually fended them off. If economic projections are any indication, this trade war could be longer-lived and more costly to Americans than in 2018. Also, unlike the 2018 trade war, it is unlikely that government subsidies will be able to rescue all of the economic losers.
The patience of the public could eventually erode. But a short-term bet on the support of Trump's base has a basis in reality.
Shannon P. Carcelli is an assistant professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Kee Hyun Park is a postdoctoral research associate at Arizona State University. In July, he will join the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore as an assistant professor.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Republicans, some Democrats and even ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich weigh in on ex-Speaker Michael Madigan's sentence
In what's become somewhat customary once an Illinois political titan falls, leaders throughout the state responded with condemnation and called for reforms upon hearing Friday that ex-Speaker Michael Madigan was sentenced to seven and a half years in federal prison and fined $2.5 million on federal corruption charges. House Republican leader Tony McCombie of Savanna and Senate Republican leader John Curran of Downers Grove called for bipartisan ethics reforms in the wake of the sentencing, with Curran specifically requesting committee hearings and votes on potential changes — something that didn't happen this session. Madigan's sentencing was 'a stark and shameful reminder of the corruption that has plagued Illinois government for far too long,' McCombie said in a statement. 'Justice was served — but the damage to public trust runs deep.' But Illinois' last prominent statewide politician who went to federal prison, former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, held back on the chance to take a swipe at a bitter nemesis when Madigan was sentenced. Though the two were Democrats, they feuded for nearly all six years Blagojevich was in office between 2003 and 2009. 'When that guy, Madigan, was on the top of the mountain, they were all kissing his ass,' Blagojevich said. 'Now they're going to be stomping all over his grave. And it's really, it's really sort of an unappealing side of human nature.' Blagojevich said Madigan's conviction underscores the systemic problems in politics and government in the state Capitol. 'Is the system in Springfield corrupt, in many ways, absolutely,' Blagojevich said in an interview with the Tribune while insisting he didn't break the law. 'It's a system, I've been saying this from the beginning, it all too often works for itself on the backs of the people.' Blagojevich — whose 14-year federal prison sentence for corruption was commuted by President Donald Trump, who ultimately also pardoned Blagojevich — didn't want to celebrate Madigan's prison sentence despite the two's often-tense relationship. 'I just don't think it's right for me to kick a man when he's down,' Blagojevich said. 'What's happening now to him, I know what it's like. And it's really easy for these politicians to get on their high horses and start kicking someone, stomping on someone.' Senate President Don Harmon, a Democrat from Oak Park who is facing a potential fine of nearly $10 million from the Illinois State Board of Elections for improper political fundraising, said Friday's sentence represented 'a solemn reminder' that the duty of public office holders is to serve 'and that there is accountability for those who do not.'
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Europe's most valuable boss? How Christian Klein went from a 15-year-old intern to SAP's savior
May has been quite a month for Christian Klein, the baby-faced boss of Europe's most valuable company, SAP. He has just finished off his opening keynote at SAP's Sapphire event in Madrid, a summit attended by more than 6,000 people, when he finds time to squeeze in a putt-off on the main stage with Team Europe's 2014 Ryder Cup captain, Paul McGinley. A hole in one (on his second attempt) seems a fitting celebration. The false start nature of his foray on the putting green is reflective of his time at the helm of SAP, with his latest landmark the culmination of a tumultuous introduction, several false starts, and an overhaul of the company's organizational structure. Boasting a market value of $350 billion as of the end of May, SAP outpaced a struggling Novo Nordisk and a stunted luxury retail sector in March to confirm the unusual sighting of a German tech group atop Europe's public markets. Novo Nordisk reclaimed the mantle on the morning of June 13. The feat tops off a remarkable rise for the enterprise resource planning group, which is toasting record revenues and profits after a bet on cloud computing coincided with a global AI pivot that has seen demand for the company's business processes suite skyrocket. Fortune spoke with members of SAP's C-suite and leadership team to understand how Klein approached the mammoth task of turning a disparate SAP into Europe's most valuable company. Klein, just 45 years old, knows SAP better than most of the 120,000 people working at the company today. He first joined as a 15-year-old summer intern, ferrying clunky monitors around SAP's Walldorf headquarters with one eye on a professional football career. 'I can still remember, I tested them all, and one out of 10 didn't work,' Klein told Fortune in Madrid. 'In our area, SAP is a logical choice,' Klein says of the fateful application to the company he would run decades later. Indeed, former classmates of his continue to work at the company, though he's not as close to them as he was then. SAP offers software packages that help businesses deal with all sorts of admin, like HR, supply-chain management, and procurement, also known as enterprise resource planning (ERP). Klein throws his head back with laughter as this reporter suggests it's not the most exciting subject matter for the layperson to try to care about. His time at the helm of the company, though, has betrayed the dull, bureaucratic principles on which SAP has made its billions. Following the departure of its previous boss, ServiceNow's American CEO, Bill McDermott, the software as a service (SaaS) provider faced criticism that it was a bloated amalgam of various acquisitions with no obvious plans to align them. McDermott and SAP got it in the neck on more than one occasion from executives at one of its main competitors, Oracle. The late former Oracle co-CEO, Mark Hurd, was critical of the company's acquisition strategy in 2019 after SAP's $8 billion move for experience management platform Qualtrics. 'We're not buying somebody to just buy them. We're buying companies that fit into our portfolio,' Hurd said at the time. It was under this cloud of uncertainty that Klein took on the role of co-CEO alongside Jennifer Morgan in 2019. In April 2020, Klein assumed the mantle of CEO alone, a month into global lockdowns, after Morgan abruptly stepped down. Sebastian Steinhaeuser, SAP's chief operating officer, first worked with Klein in 2020 as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group, ironing out a presidency-style plan for Klein's first 100 days in charge. Something about that time with Klein persuaded Steinhaeuser to jump on board, even if it raised eyebrows among his confidants. 'I think the general perception when I joined SAP, many friends and colleagues looked at me like, 'What are you doing? Like, are you sure?'' said Steinhaeuser. 'I think there was a time where instead of executing, [SAP] just defined a new strategy every two years. Every year, customers would sit here at Sapphire, we talked about the year before, if we had delivered it or not delivered it, and just pulled a new rabbit out of the hat.' Within a few months of taking sole charge of the company, Klein had to abandon a medium-term profitability forecast as the worst economic effects of the coronavirus kicked in. 'I think the stock got a hit of 20% or 25%, and everybody thought, 'It's crazy. Why would you do that?'' recalls Jan Gilg, SAP's chief revenue officer, of reactions to the guidance call. 'But then, in retrospect, you see that it was the only option he had.' Some of Klein's other big calls have been met with frustration from within his own ranks. SAP announced plans for a 10,000-strong headcount reduction in January last year. The company faced €3.1 billion in 'restructuring expenses' as a result of the deal, and retrained thousands of workers to adjust to its AI-first approach. An internal company survey released the following September, reported by Bloomberg, revealed more than half of SAP's employees were ready to join a competitor. Klein's proponents would argue his experience demonstrates what a CEO can achieve with the proper mandate for revolution. In that regard, it's not hyperbolic to compare Klein to Satya Nadella, the Microsoft CEO who increased the value of the company 10-fold in his first decade in charge by pivoting the firm first from PCs to cloud computing, then to the AI era. Just ask Muhammad Alam, a man who has worked with both CEOs, about the comparison. Alam heads up SAP's product and engineering board and is a member of the company's executive board. A 17-year Microsoft veteran, Alam left a cushy role as corporate vice president at the company's Dynamics 365 ERP (enterprise resource planning) division to join a then-uncertain SAP project. One of the reasons Alam took the leap of faith was Klein. 'I felt three years ago when I joined—and having seen Satya sort of transform Microsoft beginning in 2014—I felt the same level of energy, vision, and commitment from Christian and the leadership team here,' Alam said of the parallels between Klein and Nadella. 'I felt like he had both the ability to make the hard decisions and the energy and the commitment to see them through; because some of them aren't going to be popular with employees and others, if you will, but they're needed for the transformation.' Unlike Nadella's journey of being parachuted into Microsoft, it must have been a challenge for Klein to diagnose the strategy shift required at a company he had known intimately since his teens. Examples of long-running CEOs at Fortune 500 companies are rare. Burnout, a lack of experience, or boardroom preference for an outsider mean the onetime graduate rarely progresses to the boardroom. BMW's Oliver Zipse and General Motors' Mary Barra are two rare examples of CEOs who have worked at the same company for their entire careers. When that happens, Klein, unsurprisingly, sees it as an advantage. 'In the early days of becoming a CEO, it was of extreme value to understand who my stakeholders are. Because the transformation is not only about, 'Oh, we are now developing all software in the cloud,' it's a transformation for everyone. Everything is changing. And that's why I would say, in this situation, it was definitely a big plus,' Klein says on the advantages of being a lifer at SAP. 'I had to make sure that I communicated extremely often. All hands, investor meetings, customer meetings, because you have to explain more than once why this change is needed.' The rewards have been lucrative. In February, Klein secured a record $19.8 million payday for his efforts turning around SAP in 2024, a 165% increase on the year before. SAP stock surged to make it Europe's most valuable company weeks later. After an aggressive five-year overhaul, the outside observer would be pretty confident in declaring Klein had afforded himself the space to relax. Instead, though, Klein appears emboldened to go further, and look to the U.S.'s dominant tech sector. 'I would say I'm a bit more demanding than at the beginning, where there was sheer uncertainty. And I just had to make sure, as a leader, that everyone believes that the strategy is the right one. Now everyone believes in the strategy. Now it's about, 'How can we raise the bar and compete with the biggest tech companies in the world?'' This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Column: Will Tesla suffer if Musk alienates both political wings?
Donald Trump and Elon Musk — two epic disrupters of U.S. politics and the automotive industry, respectively and vice versa. Over the past year, they united over the election and efforts to cut government spending. They parted ways amicably … and then started trashing each other. It escalated quickly with Musk suggesting that the president be impeached and that he is implicated in the Jeffrey Epstein child-prostitution scandal. Musk later reportedly called the president before posting that he regretted some of his words: 'They went too far.' It was a remarkable breakup — incredible drama between the world's most powerful man and the world's richest man, who had been the closest of allies for hundreds of days of campaigning and governing. To the extent that it was a reality TV train wreck, I'd just as soon leave it be. But since the primary business in Musk's remarkable portfolio is nominally an automaker, it actually matters in this industry we cover. Sign up for Automotive Views, Automotive News' weekly showcase of opinions, insights, ideas and thought leadership. Love it or hate it, this disruptive era in which we live is providing us all with some real-life experiments in economics — the likes of which we probably thought we would never see. For decades, basically everyone who went to college was taught in an economics or history class that widespread tariffs would do more harm than good. Trump argues for a different approach, and he's pursuing it. Or he's pursuing it to negotiate for something else. In either case, we're now seeing how that works: So far, there's been a lot of paralysis, especially among suppliers and foreign automakers, but also a big investment announced recently by General Motors. His political strategy has been unorthodox, yet he's won two electoral colleges and one popular vote. He's only the 21st president to win two elections. So he's had success, whether some people like it or not. Same for Musk, of course: He approached the auto industry unlike anyone else — with an expensive electric car — had a couple of near-total collapses, and came out as the world's richest man and CEO of the world's most valuable automaker. That success helped propel his rocket business SpaceX and other ventures such as Starlink satellites and Twitter, which he bought and renamed X. But the disruptive move I'm watching was his decision to be an automaker CEO who got personally and financially involved in partisan politics. While new-vehicle sales skew to the affluent, when you sell something in the millions or tens of millions, a brand or model has to connect with a broad swath of people. And while there can be success with, say, a polarizing design, mass-market brands generally try to avoid alienating large chunks of their potential customer base. I've cited here before the story about Michael Jordan saying he didn't speak out on politics because 'Republicans buy sneakers, too.' In retrospect, he said it was just a funny line among friends. But the thing is that he wasn't wrong, and every business school graduate knows it. Musk, however, is not your typical MBA type. So out of his frustration with former President Joe Biden — who habitually sided with the UAW and its automakers against the U.S.-based global leader in EVs, even as he advocated for a carbon-neutral future — Musk threw an estimated quarter of a billion dollars behind the Trump campaign. That's an unbelievable sum of money to many of us, but when Trump won, it looked like the greatest bet ever. From late October to late December, Tesla stock more than doubled and its market cap approached $1.5 trillion. While Musk's political activism may have upset many of his loyal, environmentally motivated customers, there were a lot of reasons to be bullish on Tesla under Trump. It seemed likely that NHTSA and the SEC would take a more sympathetic view of the company's issues. Beyond that, Musk has refocused the company's future on artificial intelligence, humanoid robots and robotaxis. (Tesla said it plans to launch its service in Austin, Texas, on June 22.) A new administration with a deregulatory inclination toward self-driving cars was a significant tailwind. Now, those advantages for Tesla are gone or at least seemingly diminished. Structures that have legacy automakers paying to buy Tesla's credits for selling emission-free, fuel-efficient vehicles could be eliminated. (And let's not forget that Trump hinted at ending federal contracts with other Musk-affiliated companies.) Turning back to the auto business: The conventional wisdom is that Musk has now alienated all but the most apolitical consumers. Environmentally minded liberals might like EVs, but Musk's support of Trump (and the far-right Alternative for Deutschland party in Germany) has them seeking out other brands' offerings. There might have been an opportunity to become the preferred electric brand of the president's Make America Great Again movement — especially the tech-forward, high-income types and those motivated by the president's endorsement of the brand on the White House grounds. But after this month's blowup — with longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon arguing to deport Musk — that notion seemed ever more remote. No fans on the left, no fans on the right. Is Elon out in deep water in an electric boat surrounded by sharks with no friends to bail him out? Maybe not. There is significant animus against Musk on the EV-inclined left, especially in the wake of his DOGE team's deep and sometimes chaotic cuts to government entities and programs. Certainly, protests at auto retail outlets are rare. The damage to stores is not acceptable, but it shows the intensity of the situation. But I still have to wonder how far consumers will follow those kinds of feelings. Michiganders, for instance, often assume that Americans prefer to buy American cars made by American (union) workers. But I've been to America, and most of them don't care. They want the best car for their money, whether it's American, German, Japanese or Korean. Some are clamoring for cheap Chinese cars: If Xi Jinping wants to pay for half of their EV, they ask, why not let him? So maybe they won't care about Elon's politics. Tesla sales are down a little this year, but some of that might be attributable to production hiccups. If the Model Y — the bestselling model in the world last year — provides a great value, they'll probably buy it regardless of what they think of the CEO. And now we get to find out. Have an opinion about this story? Tell us about it and we may publish it in print. Click here to submit a letter to the editor. Sign in to access your portfolio
