The president who built his second-term economic agenda around import taxes is now sounding more measured about them. For most of the past two years he described "tariff" as his favorite word, a line he repeated at rallies and in interviews. Speaking in Michigan on Sunday, a little over a week before the Nov. 3 vote, Trump said press criticism had led him to demote it to his fifth favorite, Bloomberg reported. The shift in tone follows months of surveys tying the duties to living costs.
Opinion research has been consistent on the point. Voters have told pollsters that they associate the levies with higher prices rather than new jobs, and Republican candidates in farm states and battlegrounds have faced questions about their support. A Fox News poll conducted Oct. 9-12 found 69% of registered voters disapproved of Trump's handling of tariffs, a weaker reading than his overall job rating in the same survey.
Policy has begun to bend to the politics. The White House said in a fact sheet that it was removing plywood sheets, some paper products and certain machinery from the Section 338 duties on Canadian goods to "refine the scope" of the measures, replacing them with items such as valves and carpets. The underlying dispute with Ottawa remains unresolved, and officials have described a broader deal as close without announcing one.
The administration's public case now rests largely with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. He has toured factories in Utah and elsewhere arguing that tariffs are reshaping supply chains and that short-term costs are exaggerated. Greer told the Deseret News that any price effect from tariffs would be a one-time adjustment rather than a spike a year and a half later, attributing recent inflation instead to energy costs, he said in the interview. Voters will render their own judgment on Nov. 3.