Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) warned on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could result in the Republican Party being wiped out in both the House and Senate for decades.
Speaking to reporters, Paul warned that tariffs have previously “led to political decimation.”
“When McKinley, most famously, put tariffs on in 1890, they lost 50% of their seats in the next election,” he noted. “When Smoot and Hawley put on their tariff in the early 1930s, we lost the House and the Senate for 60 years. So they’re not only bad economically, they’re bad politically.”
Paul also criticized the tariffs during an interview with The Hill’s Rising.
“On tariffs, I think it’s just economically — it’s a fallacy to think that it’ll help the country,” he said. “Tariffs are a tax, and if you tax trade or if you tax anything, you’ll get less of it.”
President Trump called out Paul and three other Republican senators on Wednesday, accusing them of being “disloyal” for opposing his tariffs against Canada.
Despite the president’s attack, however, the four senators remained steadfast in their opposition to the tariffs and Paul voted with Democrats to pass a bill revoking Trump’s emergency declaration, which gave him the power to implement the tariffs against Canada.
More on Trump Tariffs:
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“I think tariffs are bad for any country, and I think they’d be bad for America, and economically, I think it’ll hurt us,” warned Paul during a radio interview on Sunday. “The stock market… there’s millions of people voting every day with their pocketbook and the stock market’s very skittish, afraid of tariffs.”
Trump unveiled a long list of reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, including tariffs against uninhabited islands and a territory occupied by a U.S. military base.
Watch above via Fox News.
