Warren staffer joins Wu campaign | Faneuil Hall not the legal name of Boston landmark, sleuth contends | Boston officials stonewall reporter on city’s emergency evacuation plans | Kraft details plans to rev up stalled Boston housing production | Dems caught between a rock and a hard place on tariffs |
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Clueless: Dems strong pushback against Trump’s tariff tough talk may undercut party’s bid to win back working-class voters
Well, that was fast.
It was not even three months ago that Dems were pledging to reach out to blue-collar voters after losing the presidential race to Trump.
But the state’s all-Democratic leadership team has wasted no time blasting Trump’s tariff threats against China, Canada, and Mexico, with U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, the No. 2 House Democrat, calling it a “major tax on every person and business in America.”
All of which has been duly reported by The Boston Globe and NPR, whose coverage of Trump’s tariff brinksmanship has been one long freakout over the potential for higher prices.
But while economists may universally hate tariffs, Trump’s tough talk on trade enjoys some of its strongest support among working-class voters that Democrats have vowed to court.
Back in December, a Quinnipiac University poll found that a majority of white voters without a four-year degree supported Trump’s tariff proposals.
And while the mainstream media may be befuddled over Trump’s targeting of Canada and Mexico along with China, bitterness over the 1993 North American Free Trade Act extends back decades in some quarters.
It’s anger that is especially reserved for Democrats, who played a key role in pushing the trade deal through Congress.
Mike Monahan, an IBEW international vice president who oversees all the electrician union’s New England locals, cites the example of a Connecticut union local employed mainly by an electronics manufacturer.
Local 215 peaked at 966 members in 1982. It then lost 500 members after the passage of NAFTA, with a further drop below 100 after China was admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Today it no longer exists, having been folded into another IBEW local.
“Both Democrats and Republicans sold out the United States with NAFTA,” Monahan told Contrarian Boston, adding that, in his view, “Trump is attempting to fix what they created.”
That said, support for Trump’s tariff proposals is strongest when it comes to China, with support from 52 percent of all registered voters in a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.
Support for tariffs against Mexico and Canada came in at a lower but still sizable 40 percent, the poll found.
Could Trump’s trade gambit backfire? Sure, and the results may not be pretty if, as Gov. Maura Healey warns, Canada retaliates and drives up electricity costs across New England by $200 million.
But there is much more to this story than is being reported in the mainstream media, where the whole issue is portrayed as just another episode of feckless Trumpian idiocy.
What’s in a name? Not much apparently when it comes to Faneuil Hall, local sleuth finds
There has been a long-running debate over whether to rename Faneuil Hall, long thought to be named after a colonial merchant with ties to the slave trade.
Enter R.J. Lyman, a top real estate lawyer and a former state environmental chief.
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