Surprising GOP Senator Breaks With Trump Over Tariffs

Senator Ted Cruz apparently has a limit on what he will tolerate from President Trump, and tariffs cross it.

The Trump sycophant told Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow Thursday that he didn’t think the president’s insane tariffs were a good idea, calling them “a tax on consumers.”

“I’m not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers,” Cruz said. “So my hope is these tariffs are short-lived and they serve as leverage to lower tariffs across the globe.

“Look, I think it is a mistake to assume that we will have high tariffs in perpetuity. I don’t think that would be good economic policy,” Cruz added. “I am not a fan of tariffs.”

Cruz qualified his comments, saying that if the tariffs cause trading partners to “dramatically reduce the tariffs they charge on U.S. goods, and services, and the consequence of that is the U.S. government dramatically cuts the tariffs that were announced yesterday, that would be a great outcome.

“But if the result is our trading partners jack up their tariffs and we have high tariffs everywhere, I think that is a bad outcome for America,” said the Texas senator.

Cruz’s mild criticism shows that even he sees the danger in blowing up the economy over a half-baked idea. Ever since his loss to Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Cruz has almost slavishly supported the president, even after Trump called his wife ugly and linked Cruz’s father to the John F. Kennedy assassination. But the Texas senator knows that tariffs will hurt his constituents, who depend on trade with Mexico, living in a border state. The question is whether he and his fellow Republicans are prepared to take legislative action over it.

Republicans aren’t happy about Donald Trump’s tariffs tanking the stock market.

In an appearance on Fox Business Friday, Senator Ron Johnson said he was worried about the direction the market was headed, after Trump’s announcement of sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to experience its biggest wipeout since 2020.

“From my standpoint, I’m certainly concerned about what’s happening right now in the markets, and I hope the administration is looking at it as well,” Johnson said.

Johnson noted that while Trump was convinced that tariffs were the answer to the country’s economic woes, “what’s also indisputable is the markets are down about 8 percent in just two days.

“I’m getting all kinds of reactions from businesses, farmers in Wisconsin that are highly concerned about what’s happening. So, those are the facts; all I can really do is report the reality to the administration, let them know how these actions are impacting my constituents,” he said.

Johnson said Trump’s tariff policy was a “bold, risky move.” Meanwhile, analysts at JP Morgan have raised their recession forecasts for the next year from 40 percent to 60 percent.

Unfortunately for the Wisconsin Republican, Trump seemed completely unbothered by the major stock market tumble.

“I think it’s going very well,” the president told reporters Thursday. “It was an operation like when a patient gets operated on, and it’s a big thing. I said this would be exactly the way it is.

“The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom, and the rest of the world wants to see, is there any way they can make a deal?” Trump added.

While White House aides have insisted that the administration is not open to negotiating on tariff rates, Trump has begun signaling that he is willing to cut deals, according to CNBC.

Trump’s new tariff policy is so unpopular in the Senate that it’s actually bringing together Democrats and Republicans.

On Wednesday night, the Senate passed a rare bipartisan rebuke of Trump, with four Republican senators joining the Democrats to approve a resolution that would limit the president’s ability to impose tariffs on Canada.

Senator Rand Paul appeared on Fox News Wednesday beside Democratic Senator Tim Kaine to criticize Trump’s tariffs, specifically the 25 percent tariff imposed on imports from Canada.

“Trade is proportional to wealth. The last 70 years of international trade has been an exponential curve upward, and the last 70 years of prosperity has been upward also,” the Kentucky Republican said. “We are richer because of trade with Canada, and so is Canada.”

Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told CNN’s Manu Raju Wednesday that he was concerned about Trump’s decision to play the long game.

“In the long run, we’re all dead. Short run matters too,” Kennedy said. “Nobody knows what the impact of these tariffs is going to be on the economy.”

Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina warned that the economic pain threshold wasn’t the same for everyone. “Anyone who says there may be a little bit of pain before we get things right, needs to talk to my farmers who are one crop away from bankruptcy,” Tillis said.

On Thursday, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley co-sponsored a bill with Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, that would allow Congress to review Trump’s tariffs. If passed, the Trade Review Act of 2025 would require Trump to give Congress 48 hours notice of tariffs he planned to impose and provide a 60-day window for Congress to approve the tariff or else have it scrapped.

In a post on X Thursday, Grassley insisted that his support of the bill was not a response to Trump’s tariffs. “If u r trying to make the Trade Review Act about current events/Trump tariffs U R MISSING THE MARK I’ve long expressed my view that congress has delegated too much authority on trade to the executive branch under Republican & Democrat presidents,” he wrote.

Donald Trump will be fine dining Friday, instead of attending a ceremony for four fallen U.S. soldiers.

The commander in chief chose to attend the LIV Golf dinner reception in Florida Thursday night, financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, flying over Delaware’s Dover Air Force base where four service members who died on training grounds in a Lithuanian swamp were being honored.

Those soldiers include 25-year-old Sergeant Jose Duenez Jr. of Joliet, Illinois; 25-year-old Sergeant Edvin F. Franco of Glendale, California; 21-year-old Private First Class Dante D. Taitano of Dededo, Guam; and 28-year-old Staff Sergeant Troy S. Knutson-Collins of Battle Creek, Michigan.

The M88 Hercules armored recovery vehicle the team had been using was discovered 16 feet underground, a day after the soldiers went missing, but the massive machinery took days to unearth in its entirety. The last soldier’s body was recovered Tuesday, capping a weeklong search by hundreds of personnel in the U.S. military and Lithuania’s emergency services.

The soldiers were honored during a dignified departure ceremony in Lithuania attended by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda. Trump’s decision to not attend the arrival ceremony suggests that the U.S. military leader cares less about America’s armed forces than the leaders of foreign countries.

Meanwhile, this very important dinner kicks off a three-day LIV Golf tournament hosted at Trump National Doral Golf Club.

Trump has had a bad history with honoring the Army’s dead. In 2020, HuffPost reported that Trump stopped attending dignified transfers after the father of slain Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens refused to meet or shake Trump’s hand. Owens died during a controversial raid on Yemen that Trump greenlit just one week into his first term.

“I told them I don’t want to meet the president,” Bill Owens told the Miami Herald at the time. Owens would go on to accuse Trump of trying to “hide behind my son’s death” in order to avoid an investigation into the incident.

But it’s possible that the deceased servicemen don’t matter at all to Trump. Last week, the president was caught completely in the dark more than 24 hours after the soldiers first went missing.

At an Oval Office news briefing, Trump casually admitted that he was not aware that the U.S. army members had disappeared during a training exercise in Lithuania.

“Have you been briefed about the soldiers in Lithuania who are missing?” a reporter asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Trump said, failing to offer the soldiers or their families any well wishes.

Trump is slated to visit Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks, marking his first trip abroad since reentering the White House, reported The Wall Street Journal. Saudi Arabia is currently the center of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.

The Trump administration is attempting to use the positive jobs report from March to assuage widespread economic panic over the unprecedented trade war the president launched on Wednesday.

“Today’s jobs report shows the private sector is roaring back under President Donald J. Trump—smashing expectations for the second straight month as the Golden Age of America is well on its way,” the White House announced in a press release emailed to reporters with the subject line “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.” “In March, the U.S. added 228,000 jobs—nearly 100,000 more jobs than economists predicted and the fourth-highest month for private payroll growth in the past two years.… The report highlights a resilient labor market as companies aggressively onshore jobs amid President Trump’s bold trade and economic agenda.”

The administration’s rhetoric is the living embodiment of the “This is fine” burning-house meme. It’s baffling to watch it try to fool Americans with this faux excitement over a jobs report as the stock market craters, panic grows, and tariff-related layoffs begin. How can manufacturers hire more, how can consumers continue to spend and invest when everything across the board becomes more expensive?

“GREAT JOBS NUMBERS, FAR BETTER THAN EXPECTED. IT’S ALREADY WORKING,” the president wrote on X, referring to his massive tariffs on virtually every U.S. trading parter. “HANK TOUGH, WE CAN’T LOSE.” (Trump later changed his misspell from ‘Hank” to “Hang.”)

“GREAT NEWS! The economy is starting to roar with a strong 228,000 jobs added in the month of March—well ahead of the market’s expectation,” wrote press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “There was also a sharp increase in transportation, construction, and warehousing employment. The President’s push to onshore jobs here in the United States is working. The Golden Age of America is on its way!”

These are insane messages to broadcast to the country as fears of stagflation set in. Even Trump’s cheerleaders at Fox Business weren’t buying the fake joy over last month’s jobs numbers.

“These numbers aren’t gonna make any difference at all,” one host said plainly. “What the market is worried about is what’s gonna happen in the future. Who’s gonna hire now in this uncertain environment? I think people are very very concerned, and that’s why … we need to get to work, we need to act on negotiating now, we need to get tax cuts now, we need to get deregulation now before this gets out of control the other way.”

“We want as quick a deal on these tariffs as soon as possible because every country would benefit,” another host chimed in. But Trump himself has made it crystal clear that there will be no deal—or, for that matter, negotiations. These tariffs are final, and help is not on the way.

Analysts at the world’s largest bank say that a recession is more likely to happen than not.

Analysts at JP Morgan, the marketing side of JP Morgan Chase & Co., adjusted their prediction Thursday that the United States would experience a recession in the next year, raising their forecasts to a whopping 60 percent from an already troubling 40 percent, according to The Wall Street Journal.

This decision comes after Donald Trump announced sweeping 10 percent tariffs on imports from nearly every country in the world, with additional country-specific tariffs levied on top.

Analysts predicted that retaliatory tariffs could lead to huge disruptions in the supply chain and that the tariff rate, which they expect to increase by 20 percentage points, would be equivalent to the biggest tax hike since 1968, which also led to a recession, according to Reuters.

Trump’s announcement continued to send the stock market tumbling Thursday, amid concerns over a global trade war. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1,679.39 points, marking its worst session since June 2020, while the Nasdaq Composite saw its steepest drop since March 2020.

When Trump was asked about the crashing markets Thursday, he responded, “I think it’s going very well.” Blatant denial seems to be the name of the game, messaging-wise, as the White House insisted that it was not watching the market.

Trump also enacted a “permanent” 25 percent tariff on all imported vehicles and autoparts—which is already kneecapping the U.S. auto industry. The president has already levied steep 25 percent tariffs on America’s closest trading partners, Mexico and Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced Thursday that the era of U.S. global leadership on trade was “over,” and said his country would begin looking elsewhere for trade partnerships.