2026-09-20T10:00:30.272Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
两党贸易强硬派早已将保护主义议程视作争取工薪阶层选民支持的万全之策。但如今唐纳德·特朗普总统将这一理论付诸实践后，该政策在竞选活动中却基本宣告失败。
特朗普推行了至少自19世纪末威廉·麦金莱以来历届总统中最具对抗性的贸易政策，部分历史学家甚至认为，其激进程度堪比建国初期的托马斯·杰斐逊时期。
但即便在长期以来被认为最能接受保护主义议程的蓝领大州和众议院选区，民主党人今年也几乎一致坦然地将反对特朗普关税作为竞选主张，而共和党人则在为关税政策辩护时举步维艰。就连那些对自由贸易协定持强烈怀疑态度的民主党人，比如俄亥俄州联邦参议员候选人谢罗德·布朗，以及挑战众议员马克斯·米勒、竞选俄亥俄州众议院席位的钢铁工人布莱恩·波因德克斯特，都毫不掩饰地谴责特朗普的关税政策。美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）和其他媒体的民调 consistently显示，认为关税损害而非改善了自身财务状况的美国人比例远高于持相反观点者——这一共识甚至延伸至没有四年制大学学历的工薪阶层白人选民。
这标志着贸易政治发生了根本性转变，可能会削弱特朗普对其核心联盟——工薪阶层选民的掌控力，并让民主党人在今年秋季得以收复他们在蓝领和农村地区丢失的阵地。特朗普对《北美自由贸易协定》的怀疑以及降低贸易壁垒的其他举措，显然助力他在2016年首次竞选总统期间以及首届总统任期内，在蓝领社区取得历史性突破。但他在第二届任期内推行的全面关税政策——甚至比20世纪70年代以来其他保护主义总统候选人提出的关税清单还要宽泛——似乎正在蚕食共和党人的支持基础，即便在那些蓝领地区亦是如此。“其他人都只是嘴上说说，但特朗普真的这么做了，”美国行动论坛（一家中右翼智库）主席道格拉斯·霍尔茨-埃金说道，“而选民们的反应是：‘不用了，谢谢。’”
几十年来，两党历任总统候选人都曾打出强硬贸易口号，并推出各类限制进口的政策。这一群体包括1980年参选的共和党人约翰·康纳利、20世纪80年代的民主党人沃尔特·蒙代尔和理查德·格普哈特，以及20世纪90年代的共和党叛军帕特里克·J·布坎南和独立候选人罗斯·佩罗。
但在特朗普之前，没有人能成功当选总统，也就无法将保护主义议程付诸实践。达特茅斯学院经济学教授、美国贸易政策历史学家道格拉斯·欧文指出，两党总统往往会对受到外国竞争者威胁的美国产业提供一定保护。但自20世纪30年代富兰克林·D·罗斯福以来的总体趋势是，共和党和民主党总统通常都会捍卫自由贸易，而保护主义冲动大多仅限于国会。
长期关注制造业贸易政策、主张限制进口的分析师艾伦·汤普逊表示，特朗普对美国一众贸易伙伴全面征收关税的做法，自19世纪90年代麦金莱时期以来无人能及。欧文则认为特朗普甚至比麦金莱走得更远：他相信特朗普正在推行自杰斐逊以来最具对抗性的贸易政策——杰斐逊曾在1807年对英国和拿破仑时代的法国实施全面贸易禁运（最终以惨败收场），以抗议两国在全球战争期间袭击美国商船。“现代历史上没有哪位总统像唐纳德·特朗普这样频繁动用关税威胁，”欧文说道。
长期研究民主党自20世纪80年代以来在工薪阶层白人选民中支持率下滑问题的民主党民调专家斯坦利·格林伯格表示，特朗普的强硬贸易政策助力他在2016年突破希拉里·克林顿的防线，在昔日多次投票支持贝拉克·奥巴马两次当选总统的破败蓝领社区获胜。
“希拉里和奥巴马都因未能理解中西部工业地带的这些情绪而受损，”格林伯格说道，“特朗普则利用这一点赢得了2016年大选，这也是他首届总统任期的核心议题——将他抨击糟糕贸易协定、倡导关税的形象，塑造成‘被遗忘的’工薪阶层选民的捍卫者。”
在首届任期内，特朗普大幅背离了其前三任总统奥巴马、乔治·W·布什和比尔·克林顿所秉持的自由贸易主流立场。特朗普重新谈判了克林顿推动国会通过的《北美自由贸易协定》；废除了奥巴马谈判达成的泛亚太自由贸易协定（奥巴马因担心影响2016年希拉里·克林顿的选情而从未将其提交国会）；并对多国进口的钢铁和铝制品以及中国的大量产品征收关税。
但这一切都只是特朗普第二届任期的序曲。与首届任期相比，特朗普在第二届任期内征收、撤销并重新征收关税，挥舞关税威胁，发起调查，一系列举措令人眼花缭乱，彻底打乱了与数十个国家的贸易规则。他对加拿大和欧盟等盟友的强硬程度，不亚于对中国等传统贸易对手。
霍尔茨-埃金指出，在特朗普之前，许多政治领导人都认为保护主义“在政治上是有利的”，但“外交政策后果糟糕”。因此，“共和党人没人敢这么做”，他说道，“但特朗普根本不在乎后者。所以我们得以孤立地观察经济影响。而民众的反应与特朗普——以及其他贸易鹰派——的预期截然不同。”
至少自20世纪70年代以来，两党主流假设一直认为，贸易问题会按教育背景划分选民群体：受过大学教育的选民最有可能支持扩大贸易，而工薪阶层选民则更容易接受限制进口以保护国内制造业就业岗位的保护主义论调。
特朗普重返白宫后，这一传统分歧依然存在。例如，芝加哥全球事务委员会的年度外交政策民调显示，2025年，近三分之二没有大学学历的白人选民更倾向于通过限制进口来保护就业的贸易政策，而非通过减少限制来降低物价的政策。拥有大学学历的白人选民则在两种政策间平分秋色；但值得注意的是，与白人同龄人形成鲜明反差的是，略占多数的非大学学历非白人选民更倾向于以控制成本为核心的贸易政策。受过大学教育的非白人选民则是所有群体中对贸易限制最持怀疑态度的。
但随着特朗普实施关税政策，现实中的关税政策已证明远不如理论上那般对大多数美国人具有吸引力。今年1月皮尤研究中心的民调显示，60%的美国人反对特朗普上调关税；认为关税对家庭产生负面影响的人数是正面影响的两倍多。今年4月CNN/SSRS的民调显示，认为关税损害了个人财务状况的美国人是认为关税有所帮助的四倍。威斯康星州和俄亥俄州这两个蓝领密集、以制造业为主的州的近期民调均发现，约60%的居民反对关税。本月公布的民调显示，民众对特朗普最新发起的对加拿大贸易战的反对声浪压倒性高涨，尤其是在边境各州：CNN的调查显示，密歇根州和缅因州三分之二或更多的选民认为，新的对加拿大关税对本州不利。
在许多此类民调中，没有四年制大学学历的白人选民对特朗普政策的支持度仍高于其他群体；例如，在1月的皮尤民调中，他们对关税的支持率与反对率持平。
但即便如此，这一支持率也比特朗普在其三次总统选举中获得该群体2:1支持率的表现要低得多。民调 consistently显示，即便在大多数没有大学学历的白人选民中，也认为关税损害了他们的个人财务状况。例如，在4月的CNN/SSRS民调中，认为关税损害了自身财务状况的非大学学历白人选民人数是认为关税有所帮助的近三倍。缅因州和密歇根州的绝大多数非大学学历白人选民都反对对加拿大征收关税。
其他群体的反对态度则更为一边倒。CNN的全国民调显示，三分之二的黑人选民和四分之三的西班牙裔选民认为关税损害了他们的财务状况。约70%的受过大学教育的白人选民也持相同观点。在缅因州，受过大学教育的白人选民对加拿大关税的反对率高达11比1以上。
就连汤普逊这样的关税支持者也承认，关税政策面临的部分问题在于特朗普征收、撤销并恢复关税的方式反复无常、难以预测。“这在很大程度上是一场令人不安的闹剧，”他说道。
但许多人都认为，关税政策面临的更大障碍在于，特朗普此时推进关税政策正值选民最担忧的问题是应对持续高企的生活成本之际。“他选择在民众对生活成本高企愤怒不已的时候推出这些关税政策，直接推高了物价，”格林伯格说道。他补充道，特朗普首届任期内民众对强硬贸易举措的接受度，“已经被当前的通胀时期彻底冲垮了”。
总部位于威斯康星州的共和党战略家马克·格劳尔对此表示赞同。关税政策对特朗普和共和党来说行不通，他说道，原因很简单：“因为人们将生活成本上涨归咎于这些关税。”
特朗普的核心问题在于输家与赢家的错配
比起民调数据，政客们的行动更能体现贸易政治的转变。
关税政策遭到艾奥瓦州和堪萨斯州联邦参议员民主党候选人约什·图雷克、亚当·汉密尔顿，以及在内布拉斯加州参选的民粹派独立候选人丹·奥斯本的强烈批评，这或许并不令人意外。高关税历来在农业州不受欢迎，因为人们担心外国会报复美国的农产品出口。
更能说明问题的是，在许多长期以来选民对自由贸易协定持怀疑态度的制造业大州，民主党候选人也反对特朗普的关税政策。
例如在密歇根州，民主党州长候选人乔斯林·本森和联邦参议员候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德都谴责共和党对手支持特朗普的关税政策，尤其是针对加拿大的新关税。代表弗林特周边破败蓝领选区的民主党众议员克里斯汀·麦克唐纳·里维特，最近将其选区一家半导体制造工厂的倒闭归咎于特朗普“混乱的关税制度”和“鲁莽的”贸易政策。“正是这种混乱导致企业倒闭，”她指责道。
波因德克斯特这位竞选克利夫兰以南众议院席位的钢铁工人，推出了一则以橄榄球为主题的新广告，承诺“阻止糟糕的贸易协定”。但在采访中，波因德克斯特表示，虽然如果当年他在国会任职，他会投票反对《北美自由贸易协定》，但“我们看到的全面关税却推高了工薪家庭的生活成本”。
“我认为关税在公平竞争环境方面可以发挥非常有用的作用，”他补充道，“但对我们美国不生产的商品征收关税毫无意义。”
最引人注目的或许是前俄亥俄州民主党参议员谢罗德·布朗的态度，他今年正挑战共和党参议员乔恩·赫斯特德。在批评自由贸易方面，没有哪位民主党人比布朗资历更深。但他也直言不讳地表示：“这些关税显然没有起到作用……各地的人们都在为所有商品支付更高的价格，而这批针对加拿大的新关税更是将一场本已糟糕的政策变得更加糟糕。”
面对这种强烈反对声浪，几乎没有共和党人与特朗普划清界限（苏珊·柯林斯参议员对加拿大关税的谨慎批评是个例外）。绝大多数参众两院共和党人都多次投票支持关税政策。“听着，这些关税正在发挥作用，”堪萨斯州联邦参议员罗杰·马歇尔在本月与汉密尔顿的激烈辩论中，对着台下的嘘声坚持说道。
汤普逊也辩称，“从经济角度来看，进展非常顺利”。他指出特朗普第二届任期内制造业总产量有所增长。但这一水平仍低于特朗普首届任期内以及奥巴马第二届任期内的峰值。
无论如何，与政治更相关的衡量标准是制造业就业人数。根据联邦统计数据，尽管近几个月有所增长，但目前制造业就业人数（1263.8万）仍略低于特朗普就职时的水平（1267.3万），仅占所有劳动者的7.5%左右。事实上，如今的制造业就业人数仅比特朗普2017年首次就职时略高一点。“哪怕最初说‘我想给他一个机会’的人也会说，‘这根本没有带来回报’，”专注于工薪阶层选民的民主党联盟组织“美国桥梁”的付费媒体与合作总监伊娃·坎普说道。
这些就业数据暴露出更深层次的脆弱性。对特朗普关税的强烈反对表明，保护主义议程在赢家和输家之间存在根本性错配。特朗普关税政策的最佳结果或许是最终新增几十万制造业就业岗位。但总有一天能获得这些就业岗位的人数，永远无法与如今承担更高物价的人数相提并论。“哪怕这绝对是正确的政策，要说服那些正在为眼前成本买单的民众也非常、非常困难，”布鲁金斯学会高级研究员、长期担任民主党政策分析师的威廉·加尔斯顿说道。
即便特朗普下台，民主党人似乎也不太可能重拾奥巴马和比尔·克林顿时期对自由贸易协定的热情。但正如加尔斯顿所言，下一届民主党总统很可能会用“手术刀”取代特朗普的“大锤”来处理关税问题。更大的问题或许是，如果特朗普的关税政策导致一些共和党国会议员在11月的选举中丢掉席位，特朗普领导下共和党内部涌动的保护主义浪潮是否会开始退去。
‘Voters are like, No thanks’: Trump’s tariffs fall flat with the working class
2026-09-20T10:00:30.272Z / CNN
It’s become an article of faith for trade hardliners in both parties that a protectionist agenda is a guaranteed pathway to building support among working-class voters. But now that President Donald Trump is testing that theory in practice, it is largely flopping on the campaign trail.
Trump has pursued the most confrontational trade agenda of any president since at least William McKinley at the end of the 19th century, and by the estimation of some historians, even Thomas Jefferson around its beginning.
But even in heavily blue-collar states and House districts that were long believed to be the most receptive to a protectionist agenda, Democrats almost uniformly have been comfortable this year running against the Trump tariffs, while Republicans have struggled to defend them. Even Democrats who are deeply skeptical of free trade agreements — like Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown and Brian Poindexter, the ironworker running against Rep. Max Miller for an Ohio House seat — have been unreserved in condemning the Trump tariffs. Polls by CNN and other media organizations consistently show that far more Americans believe the tariffs have hurt rather than helped their financial bottom line — and that consensus extends even to working-class white voters without a four-year college degree.
All this marks a fundamental shift in the politics of trade that could loosen Trump’s hold on the working-class voters at the core of his coalition — and allow Democrats this fall to recover some of the ground they have lost in blue-collar and rural places. Trump’s skepticism about the North American Free Trade Agreement and other moves to lower trade barriers clearly helped power his historic gains in blue-collar communities during his initial 2016 race and his first presidential term. But his sweeping second-term tariffs — which exceed even the wish lists that other protectionist presidential candidates have put forward since the 1970s — appear to be bleeding Republican support, even in those working-class places. “Everyone else talked about it, but Trump did it,” says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank. “And voters are like: ‘no thanks.’”
For decades, a steady procession of presidential hopefuls in both parties had offered a tough-on-trade message and an assortment of policies to restrict imports. That list extends from Republican John Connally in 1980 to Democrats Walter Mondale and Richard Gephardt in the 1980s to GOP insurgent Patrick J. Buchanan and independent candidate Ross Perot in the 1990s.
But before Trump, none of them won the presidency — and with it the ability to implement a protectionist agenda. Presidents of both parties have often provided some protection to American industries threatened by foreign competitors. But the general pattern since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s has been that Republican and Democratic presidents alike have generally defended free trade, while the protectionist impulse has been confined mostly to Congress, notes Douglas Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and historian of American trade policy.
Trump’s willingness to impose tariffs on a panoramic list of US trading partners is unmatched since McKinley in the 1890s, says Alan Tonelson, a longtime manufacturing trade policy analyst and advocate for import restrictions. Irwin thinks Trump outmatches even McKinley: He believes Trump is pursuing the most confrontational trade policy since Jefferson imposed an (ultimately disastrous) 1807 embargo on all commerce with both England and Napoleon-era France in protest of their attacks on American shipping during their worldwide conflict. “There’s been no president in modern history who has used the tariff threat nearly as much as Donald Trump,” says Irwin.
Stanley Greenberg, a longtime Democratic pollster who has studied the party’s diminishing support among working-class white voters since the 1980s, says that Trump’s hardline approach on trade contributed to his 2016 breakthroughs against Hillary Clinton in battered blue-collar communities that had, in many cases, previously voted for Barack Obama during his two presidential victories.
“Hillary got hurt and Obama got hurt by not understanding these sentiments in the industrial Midwest,” Greenberg says. “And Trump used that to his advantage to win the election in 2016 and it was a fundamental part of his presidency in the first term, in which the association of him going after bad trade agreements and him championing tariffs” allowed him to present himself as a champion of “forgotten” working-class voters.
In his first term, Trump sharply veered from the preponderantly free trade outlook of his three immediate predecessors: Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Trump renegotiated NAFTA, the free trade agreement that Clinton pushed through Congress; scrapped the pan-Asian free trade agreement that Obama had negotiated (but never submitted to Congress for fear of hurting Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election); and imposed tariffs primarily on steel and aluminum imports from many countries as well as a wide array of products from China.
But all that was barely an overture for Trump’s second term. To a far greater extent than in his first term, Trump has levied, withdrawn and reimposed tariffs; brandished threats; and launched investigations in a bewildering blur that has upended the rules of trade with dozens of countries. He has moved as aggressively against allies, such as Canada and the European Union, as against traditional trade adversaries such as China.
Before Trump, Holtz-Eakin notes, many political leaders believed “the politics were good” for protectionism, “but the foreign policy implications were bad.” As a result, “no Republican would go there,” he says. “But Trump didn’t care about the latter. So, we’ve (been able) to see the economics in isolation.” And the reaction has been very different than what Trump — and other trade hawks — expected.
Since at least the 1970s, the dominant assumption in each party has been that trade issues divided the public along educational lines, with college-educated voters the most likely to favor expanding trade and working-class voters most receptive to a protectionist message of restricting imports to try to protect domestic manufacturing jobs.
That traditional divide persisted even as Trump returned to office. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ annual foreign policy polling, for instance, found that in 2025 nearly two-thirds of whites without a college degree preferred a trade policy that imposed restrictions on imports to protect jobs over an approach that minimized restrictions to lower prices. Whites with a college degree split evenly over which approach they preferred; notably, however, in a sharp departure from their white counterparts, a slight majority of nonwhites without a college degree preferred a trade policy that focused on costs. College-educated nonwhites were the most skeptical of all toward restrictions.
But as Trump has implemented his tariffs, they have proven less attractive for most Americans in practice than in theory. In Pew polling this January, 60% of Americans opposed his tariff increases; more than twice as many said it had affected their family negatively as positively. In a CNN/SSRS poll this April, four times as many Americans said the tariffs had hurt their personal finances as said they’d helped. Recent polls in Wisconsin and Ohio, two heavily working-class, manufacturing-oriented states, both found about 60% of residents opposed the tariffs. Polls released this month have found overwhelming opposition to Trump’s latest trade war against Canada, particularly in states along the border: In CNN surveys, about two-thirds or more of voters in both Michigan and Maine said the new Canadian tariffs were bad for their state.
In many of these surveys, whites without a four-year college degree remained relatively more sympathetic to Trump’s approach than other groups; in January’s Pew survey, for instance, they split evenly on whether they approved of the tariffs.
But even that represents much more resistance than Trump usually faces among a group that supported him by 2:1 margins in all three of his presidential races. And polls consistently find that even most whites without a four-year degree believe the tariffs have hurt their personal bottom line. In the April CNN/SRSS poll, for instance, nearly three times as many non-college whites said the tariffs had hurt as helped their finances. Big majorities of non-college whites opposed the Canada tariffs in both Maine and Michigan.
Other groups were even more lopsided in their opposition. In CNN’s national polling, two-thirds of Black voters and three-fourths of Hispanics said the tariffs had hurt their finances. So did about 7 in 10 college-educated whites. In Maine, college-educated whites opposed the Canada tariffs by more than 11 to 1.
Even supporters like Tonelson agree part of the problem for the tariffs has been the erratic, unpredictable way Trump has imposed, removed and restored them. “It is an unnerving spectacle to a needless extent,” he says.
But many agree the bigger obstacle for the tariffs is that Trump is advancing them at a moment when voters’ top concern is the struggle with persistently high costs. “He’s decided to do these tariffs in such a way that jumped up prices … at a time of unbelievable anger about the high cost of living,” Greenberg says. The receptivity to tough trade measures evident in Trump’s first term, he adds, “has been completely blown away by this new period of inflation.”
Wisconsin-based Republican strategist Mark Graul agrees. The tariff agenda is not working for Trump and the GOP, he says, for a straightforward reason: “because it is being blamed for the higher prices that people are experiencing.”
Trump’s core problem is a mismatch between losers and winners
Even more than the polls, the actions of politicians capture how the politics of trade have shifted.
It’s probably not a surprise that the tariffs face intense criticism from Josh Turek and Adam Hamilton, the Democratic Senate candidates in Iowa and Kansas, as well as Dan Osborn, the populist independent running in Nebraska. High tariffs have always been unpopular in farm states because of fears of foreign retaliation against agricultural exports.
More revealing is the opposition to the Trump tariffs from Democrats running in burly manufacturing states where many voters have long been skeptical of free trade deals.
In Michigan, for instance,the Democratic nominees for governor (Jocelyn Benson) and Senate (Abdul El-Sayed) have both denounced their Republican opponents for supporting Trump’s tariffs, especially the new levies on Canada. Democratic Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet, who represents a struggling blue-collar district around Flint, recently blamed Trump’s “chaotic tariff regime” and “reckless” trade policies for the closure of a semiconductor manufacturing plant in her district. “It’s that chaos that causes businesses to close,” she charged.
Poindexter, the ironworker seeking a House seat south of Cleveland, is running a new football-themed ad promising to “block the bad trade deals.” But an in interview, Poindexter said that while he would have voted against NAFTA had he been in Congress at the time, “what we’ve seen with the blanket tariffs is it’s driven up costs on working families.”
“I think tariffs can be very useful in leveling the playing field,” he added. “But it makes no sense to tariff things we don’t produce in America.”
Perhaps most striking has been the reaction from former Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is opposing Republican Sen. Jon Husted this year. No Democrat has a longer pedigree of criticizing free trade than Brown. Yet he too says flatly, “These tariffs have clearly not worked. … People everywhere are paying more for everything and this new batch of tariffs against Canada is (taking) a disastrous policy and making even more of a disaster.”
Against this onslaught, hardly any Republicans have broken with Trump (with Sen. Susan Collins’ careful criticism of the Canada tariffs an exception). The vast majority of House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly voted to defend the tariffs. “Look, these tariffs are working,” Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall insisted to loud boos during a raucous debate with Hamilton this month.
Tonelson, too, argues that “from an economic point of view, it’s gone very well.” He points to an increase in total manufacturing output during Trump’s second term. But that level is still lower than at points of Trump’s first term and Barack Obama’s second.
In any case, the more politically relevant measure is how many people are working in manufacturing. And on that front, despite gains in recent months, slightly fewer people are employed in manufacturing now (12.638 million) than when Trump returned to office (12.673 million), according to federal statistics. That’s only about 7.5% of all workers. Manufacturing employment today, in fact, is only slightly higher than when Trump first took office in 2017. “Even people who were saying (at first), ‘I want to give him the benefit of the doubt,’ will say ‘it’s just not paying off,’” says Eva Kemp, director of paid media and partnerships at American Bridge, a Democratic-aligned group that focuses on working-class voters.
Those employment numbers point to a deeper vulnerability. The backlash against Trump’s levies suggests that a protectionist agenda faces a fundamental mismatch between winners and losers. The best-case for Trump’s tariffs is that they might eventually add a few hundred thousand more manufacturing jobs. But the number of people who might get those jobs — someday — will always be dwarfed by the number paying higher prices today. “Even if it’s absolutely the right thing to do, it’s really, really hard to persuade people who are responding to the upfront costs,” says William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and longtime Democratic policy analyst.
Even after Trump, Democrats seem unlikely to return to the Obama/Bill Clinton enthusiasm for free trade agreements. But, as Galston says, on tariffs, the next Democratic president is likely to replace Trump’s “sledgehammer with the scalpel.” The bigger question may be whether the protectionist tide that has been surging in the GOP under Trump starts to recede if his tariffs cost some congressional Republicans their own jobs in November.