After Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, debates about the wisdom and political salience of modern industrial policy took off among policy elites. This was accompanied by endless chatter about a new “working-class economics” and a blue-collar voting base to support it. Trump’s transformation of Republican economic policy away from its libertarian roots, and the subsequent populist-progressive movement among Democrats, led many analysts to declare the end of “neoliberalism,” interpreting the political shifts as a rejection of traditional American support for free trade, market-oriented economic policy, and high-skilled immigration.
Trump’s initial version of “America First” economics centered on lowering both corporate and individual income taxes, restricting immigration, and levying hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on Chinese imports. He also imposed tariffs on steel (25 percent) and aluminum (10 percent) imports and replaced NAFTA with a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. Before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the economy, Trump presided over record-low unemployment and a period of manufacturing job growth. His economic agenda appeared to have political momentum, even as the longer-term effects of his trade policies remained contested.
The Democratic version of industrial policy under Joe Biden centered less on economic nationalism and more on using the green-energy transition as the basis for a “middle-out” agenda. It included investments in infrastructure, advanced research and development, and new social supports, as well as selected “national security” tariffs on critical technologies like microchips to protect American interests and encourage the creation of high-paying manufacturing jobs. Like Trump, Biden’s non-traditional economic model also enjoyed initial success and support as his administration led the U.S. out of the pandemic recession. But the subsequent surge in inflation and household costs undermined public backing for Biden’s economic agenda, as Americans grew increasingly worried about the price of everyday goods and energy.
Trump II’s updated nationalist economic agenda has so far eschewed more universal tariffs on all trading partners, which could have conceivably enjoyed congressional support, in favor of a hodgepodge of executive-directed trade barriers slapped on selected countries, both friends and foes alike, depending on the president’s shifting priorities. The erratic nature of this tariff agenda, defended under claims of emergency authority, also ran into a constitutional obstacle. The Supreme Court struck down most of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, ruling that the emergency powers statute did not authorize him to impose them unilaterally.
More importantly, ongoing American worries about inflation and the high cost of living appear to have driven dramatic shifts in public support for President Trump’s nationalist program.
As Greg Ip points out in his latest Wall Street Journal column, “tariffs,” once labeled by Trump as the most beautiful word in the dictionary, is now the “most hated word in politics.” Protectionist policies, uniformly disdained by the economics profession, have always had intuitive appeal as a means for politicians to stand up for American industries and workers. But instead of drawing workers to his side, Trump’s latest tariff bonanza fell flat:
Comparisons across surveys are complicated by differing questions, but pre-election polls typically showed voters either neutral, slightly positive, or slightly negative on tariffs. In an August 2024 Wall Street Journal poll, approval beat disapproval, 47 percent to 40 percent.
That changed once Trump entered office. He slapped levies on China, Canada and Mexico, and then, in April 2025, on almost everyone. Opinion turned negative, and has become more so this year. Most striking is the shift among the workers targeted to benefit from tariff protection. A poll by Echelon Insights and Economic Innovation Group found those identifying as blue collar went from net 3 percent approval in August 2025, to net 22 percent disapproval last month.
What happened? Trump’s trade agenda collided with the public’s cost of living agenda, and trade lost. The public blames tariffs even more than the war with Iran for worsening inflation, according to Echelon.
Democrats are now hammering Trump’s tariffs in advertising ahead of next week’s midterm elections and promising to rip them up wholesale. Republicans embroiled in tight Senate races in northern border states, like Susan Collins and Mike Rogers, are either receiving special tariff dispensations for state agricultural and forestry products, as in Maine, or denouncing the president’s tariffs as Rogers has done in Michigan.
Whatever happens in November, a major political revival of tariffs and economic nationalism seems improbable in the near term.
Some tariffs will likely hang around and become entrenched as beneficiaries line up to defend their positions and revenues come in. As Ip argues, “Repeal might also get harder by 2028 when domestic industries have gotten used to protection, some of the promised investment has materialized and tariffs are supplying almost $200 billion a year in federal revenue.”
But the prospect of a full-scale rejection of the “neoliberal order” in favor of economic nationalism looks remote. Partisanship has made it difficult to sustain a coherent economic model across administrations, while inflation and the high cost of living have undermined public patience for longer-term gains from nationalist policy when voters are more concerned about immediate affordability and relief. Trump’s tariffs serve as the clearest example of this tension.
The broader industrial-policy experiment, however, may not be over. Many of these ideas will retain their currency among policymakers in both parties, as will concerns about economic competition with China and the rise of new technologies like artificial intelligence.
What seems increasingly unlikely is that either party will build a durable political coalition around its particular brand of economic nationalism. Any partisan agenda—whether built on green industrial policy or broad-based tariffs—will face rival opposition and voter skepticism over its ability to lower prices and improve the lives of working-class Americans.
One thing that is continually ignored; foreign county's protectionist tariffs against the USA. Trump didn't start protectionist tariffs.
And, once upon a time, the federal government derived the majority of its income from tariffs on foreign imports, not from U.S. citizens.