The benefits of international trade and investment have always been uneven, and in recent decades the costs of unfair trade practices have disproportionately affected American manufacturing workers and communities – damage now compounded by corporate investments in automation. Selectively applied tariffs, in response to unfair trade practices, can help protect workers and incentivize investment in U.S.-based manufacturing. By contrast, President Trump’s economy-wide tariffs on our largest trading partners and his escalating trade wars could result in large-scale job loss, rising inflation, and unprecedented disruption to U.S. alliances. A better approach would be to fully enforce existing U.S. trade laws and to sustain and deepen investments in the American workforce and industries of the future.
Call on Congress to insist on the responsible use of trade enforcement tools like tariffs, reject actions that risk escalating trade wars, and support trade and investment partnerships with strong protections for workers and the environment.
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Economic uncertainty has reigned during President Trump’s second term, as he announces or threatens more tariffs on most imported goods on an almost weekly basis. Dealing with the increased costs for overseas products, small businesses are struggling, increasingly forced to raise prices on consumers. Tariffs on timber, wood, furniture and kitchen cabinets could lead to increased housing costs. And the unpredictability of the Trump administration has driven much of the rest of the world, including U.S. allies, to pursue separate trade deals at the expense of the United States, while American farmers have lost billions in revenues as countries like China take countermeasures.
President Trump’s scattershot approach to tariffs has primarily relied on the unprecedented use of emergency national security authorities, upending the constitutional role of Congress to set trade policy. In August 2025, a federal appeals court found that the use of these emergency powers to impose tariffs was unlawful, a ruling now pending before the Supreme Court.
