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Add it up for them
Kay W.
August 09, 2025
State level analysis of polling on the GOP tariff policy:
In competitive states, Trump is weakest in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where just 39% of voters approve of how he’s handling trade, followed closely by Nevada at 40% and Michigan at 41%. These are states where the margin of victory in the 2024 presidential elections was razor-thin, so a twenty-point deficit for the president represents meaningful degradation in support for his agenda.
And even in swing states where Trump performed better in 2025, he remains firmly underwater on tariffs. On average, in all competitive states, Trump's approval on tariffs is 10 points below his vote share in the 2024 presidential election.
So this is a point of vulnerability for Republicans, but just describing tariffs as “a tax increase” and leaving it at that is arguing on GOP turf (anti tax).
Instead, let’s describe tariffs as a regressive tax (as opposed to income tax, which is progressive) where the tariff/tax burden falls hardest on lower- and middle-income people:
Based on this initial analysis, it appears tariffs are imposed in a regressive manner – in part because expenditures on traded goods are a higher share of income and non-housing consumption among lower income households, but also due to explicit regressivity within categories.
Gavin Newsome makes this “regressive tax” argument when he’s comparing California to Texas and Florida. Texas and Florida have low (or no) progressive taxation but they load up poor and middle income with a disproportionate share of taxes using sales taxes and fees and what it costs to replace public services they don’t provide.
I think this argument has gotten some traction - there’s a whole Tik Tok genre of people who moved to Florida from states like NY or CT or MA and they find that when they add it all up Florida is as expensive as those higher tax states, just with fewer services and lower quality of life.
We (of course) don’t have to say “regressive tax”. Instead we can say Donald Trump and Republicans are “nickel and diming” the working and middle class to death. It’ll be easy to do- grocery prices are thru the roof.
*photo is a sweet pea from my garden
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