A decent number of Republicans are furious at President Trump. Almost all of them are too timid to do anything about it, though.
When Trump decided, over Fox News one day, to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum — a move that invites a trade war, threatens to undercut the economic success of the last year, and will disproportionally harm his supporters by raising the price on everything from automobiles and airplanes to beer cans and baseball bats — Republicans groaned loudly.
But then they didn’t do anything.
The GOP, quite simply, would rather let tariffs wreck the economy than anger Trump. They will stand around mumbling to themselves as he douses the market in mercantile gasoline, then ever so reluctantly hand him the matches.
Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., provides a case in point. He is a Republican from a somewhat liberal congressional district in Illinois that President Barack Obama regularly dominated, and Trump recently lost badly. He is staunchly conservative, one of the unsung heroes of tax reform. His suburban Chicago constituents work primarily in manufacturing, many at Boeing’s international headquarters.
That conservative, against-the-grain manufacturing profile makes Roskam the perfect person to push back on tariffs. And while he has voiced his opposition, Roskam admits Republicans won’t actually do anything.
“I don’t think it’s realistic that we are going to get the numbers that override a presidential veto,” Roskam tells the Washington Examiner’s editorial board when asked if legislation could check the president. Tariffs are in “the administration’s realm of authority,” Roskam explains and so it’s “the administration’s responsibility to come up with a plan” that doesn’t do harm to the economy.
This opinion is widespread. Even the House Freedom Caucus, that little fortress of conservative obstructionism, hasn’t taken a serious stand against tariffs. Earlier this week, Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said as much, insisting “it would be disingenuous to suggest there will be enough votes to override a veto.”
In other words, it seems, Republicans will let Trump run the economy into a ditch all on his own. They won’t reach across the aisle to work with business-minded Democrats and act like a co-equal branch of government, because that might make Trump mad.
