President Donald Trump is causing a rift to grow in the Republican Party as he pushes for ever more aggressive tariffs, GOP pollster Kristen Stoltis Anderson told CNN's Jake Tapper — particularly when it comes to tariffs on our immediate neighbors and allies like Canada.
Trump has repeatedly delayed and narrowed his tariff threats on Canada and Mexico, but keeps returning to them, with the result that Canadian politicians are retaliating with their countermeasures, creating economic uncertainty.
"Kristen, podcaster and commentator Ben Shapiro, generally a pro-Trump conservative commentator, put out a statement defending Canada, saying, quote, 'Canada is the number one trade partner of the United States. They are not a financial or economic or physical threat to the United States, treating them as such is not a wise move.' And this kind of gets into the fact that there are a lot of Republicans who feel the same way Shapiro does."
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"Yeah," agreed Anderson. "Trade is an issue that divides the Republican Party, and especially when you start getting into the details of, are we talking about tariffs on China, where you can, in fact, get quite a number of Republicans to say, okay, let's make that relationship a little more fair? But when it comes to our neighbors at the very north and very south, it's where things get a little dicier."
"And so in some ways, it shouldn't surprise me to see prominent conservative commentators coming out and saying this, because this has been a divide within the right for some time, and especially if it begins yielding negative economic consequences, tariffs are going to get a lot less popular, a lot more quickly," she continued.
Shapiro's discontent is far from the first sign of this rift. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has told constituents in farming communities he too is "very concerned" about the impact of tariffs on his own state.
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