The Conservative Tariff Consensus Is Real
The conservative movement in America is now decisively in favor of tariffs.
We’ve discussed this transformation in the past. The post-war conservative movement was once dominated by self-styled free traders, as was the movement’s political vehicle, the Republican Party. But opposition to tariffs is now confined to a legacy rump of the right, a small minority of conservatives and Republicans.
A survey conducted by YouGov for the Economist in late October found that two-thirds of registered Republicans say tariffs should be kept at the new higher levels or raised even further. Twenty-eight percent want higher tariffs, and 38 percent are happy with current levels. Just 17 percent said tariffs should be reduced. Similarly, 68 percent of Trump voters say they favor keeping tariffs at current levels or raising them, including 31 percent who say tariffs should go higher still.
Support for President Donald Trump’s tariffs have increased since early April’s Liberation Day. Back then, 61 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Trump voters said tariffs should go higher or be kept the same. That broke down as 43 percent saying we needed higher tariffs. Sixteen percent want lower tariffs.
And support for higher tariffs has climbed significantly since the earliest days of the Trump administration. In the Economist poll taken between February 12 and 14, just 24 percent of Republicans said tariffs should go higher and 30 percent said they should be kept where they are. A quarter of Republicans said that tariffs should be cut. The breakdown among Trump voters was similar: 24 percent wanted higher tariffs, 34 percent wanted tariffs maintained where they were, and 23 percent wanted lower tariffs.
These surveys show that not only has support for Trump’s tariffs increased and support for lower tariffs declined over the course of this year but that more Republicans and Trump voters are happy with the current level. A plurality think that Trump got tariffs just about right. Opposition to tariffs has trailed off even as tariffs have been hiked.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during his “Liberation Day” event in the White House Rose Garden on April 2, 2025. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Tariffs Are Now the Conservative Orthodoxy
The YouGov survey for the Economist recently asked about tariffs in a slightly different way. Instead of simply asking about whether tariffs should be raised, lowered, or kept the same, it asked Americans to assess the political position associated with the statement that tariffs should be raised on products imported from foreign countries. Sixty percent of Americans now say that support for tariff hikes is a conservative position, seven percent say it is a liberal position, 17 percent say it is neither liberal nor conservative (probably these are those same self-styled conservatives who oppose tariffs), and 15 percent say they don’t know.
What’s really interesting, however, is that an even greater number of people who identify as conservatives think support for raising tariffs is conservative. According to the survey, 69 percent of conservatives say it is conservative to support raising tariffs. Seventy-one percent of Trump voters agree.
This is a rare spot of agreement between conservatives and liberals. Among liberals, 68 percent say support for higher tariffs is a conservative position. Among Harris voters, 71 percent do, matching the share for Trump voters.
Republicans are slightly less likely to say that support for raising tariffs is conservative, at 59 percent. Similarly, 57 percent of moderates and 56 percent of registered independents identify tariff hiking with conservatives.
What these numbers tell us is that support for tariffs is no longer a Trumpian deviation from conservative principles or mainstream Republican politics. The cause of tariffs is now thoroughly embedded in conservatism, and support for tariffs is a conservative principle. The Republican Party is the party of tariffs.
Fittingly, this is a return to an older set of principles that was long suppressed. As we wrote in July:
From Presidents Abraham Lincoln to William McKinley to Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party was the party of tariffs. It used them not only to protect American labor but to finance the federal government and build an industrial powerhouse. Between 1860 and 1930, the GOP won thirteen of fifteen presidential elections. The only Democratic victories — Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson — came amid Republican splits. During that era, while tariffs funded American development, the nation transformed from an agrarian economy into the world’s preeminent manufacturing power.
Abe Lincoln declared in 1844: “Give us a protective tariff, and we will have the greatest nation on earth.” For nearly all of the century that followed, Republicans and conservatives agreed. And now the party and the movement have come home, agreeing that tariffs can make America great again.
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