Western Pennsylvania Congressman Chris Deluzio says Democrats should use tariffs as an economic tool — despite misgivings that may stem from President Trump’s chaotic deployment of the policy.
After weeks of seeing Trump using tariffs as a threat and a bargaining chip, “We have some Democrats who are deciding that ‘All tariffs all the time are to be opposed,’ and I don't think that makes any sense,” Deluzio told WESA Friday.
In a New York Times op-ed published earlier that day, Deluzio said tariffs can help U.S. manufacturing, even though President Trump's on-again/off-again use of them on Canada and Mexico has been damaging.
“Democrats need to break free from the wrong-for-decades zombie horde of neoliberal economists who think tariffs are always bad,” the piece argued.
Deluzio told WESA his constituents know a new approach is needed: “Tariffs are a piece of it. Industrial policy, incentivizing American companies to produce here, better trade enforcement, better trade deals — that's what we ought to be doing.”
“I don't want folks to be confused. I think [Trump’s] approach has been wrong,” he said. “But I think Democrats ought to be a little more strategic in considering the effect of tariffs.”
If they’re carefully thought out, Deluzio said, tariffs can encourage U.S. companies to produce more at home and prevent companies from exploiting cheap labor overseas. “Bad trade policies” such as the North American Free Trade Agreement enacted in the 1990s, he said, led to the decline of domestic manufacturing, especially in the Rust Belt.
Deluzio said some Democratic colleagues agree with him, including those from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Groups like the Council on Foreign Relations note that U.S. manufacturing was on a downward trend as early as the 1970s. Pittsburgh’s own steel industry collapsed in the 1980s, well before the controversial NAFTA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico took effect.
But Deluzio said such pacts didn’t help. Instead, those policies “led to the death of a lot of American manufacturing jobs, solid union jobs… [and] let Wall Street and the corporate-management class decide that it was more important to chase the cheapest and weakest labor rules… at the expense of American manufacturing.”
For example, Mexican workers by some estimates make four times less than the average American worker. And Deluzio said that unless the U.S. ensures those workers are not exploited by trade deals, “we're not going to see tariffs alone fix our trade deficit,” as companies look to other countries for less expensive labor.
“Places like Western Pennsylvania and the Rust Belt that saw bad trade deals for decades — we know what it is to see our country fail us on trade,” Deluzio said. “And I think Democrats should be wise to understand the importance of tariffs in our toolbox of how we grow American manufacturing jobs.”
