Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy flatly told Fox News Friday that the market meltdown in the wake of Donald Trump’s radical series of global tariffs is “not good.”
The “stock market matters,” Kennedy said in the interview, noting that “millions” of Americans “have money in the markets.”
“What’s happening is not good. Will it continue? Will we find the bottom, and then it will start to go back up? I hope so,” Kennedy said. “That’s what I’m pulling for. But if it doesn’t, we’ll have to recalibrate.”
Kennedy is one of the latest to join a tiny, but growing and increasingly vocal group of Republican lawmakers revealing mounting jitters about Trump’s latest action on tariffs.
Long-time Trump stalwart Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has warned of the “risk” of the president’s draconian tariffs and subsequent market plunge in what could be his harshest criticism of Trump to date.
“I think it’s a reasonably high risk,” he told NPR Thursday. “He will either reap the rewards or suffer the consequences.”
Earlier this week Johnson said on CNN that he expected Wisconsin to be “particularly hard hit with all the manufacturing and agricultural interests.”
He added: “Right now, I’ll give him [Trump] the benefit of the doubt, but I am concerned.”
Kennedy ominously told Newsmax on Wednesday of Trump’s tariff edict: “In the long run, we’re all dead.”
He added: “We’re in uncharted territory … anybody who tries to tell you that they know what the short-term impact is going to be is just lying. Either that or they’re selling deep stupid.”
Kennedy noted: “My experience with Washington economists is that they make those late-night psychic hotlines look respectable.”
Trump has insisted any “pain” will be over quickly.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis told CNN’s Manu Raju earlier this week: ”Anyone who said there’ll be a little bit of pain before we get things right, they didn’t talk about farmers who are one crop away from bankruptcy.”
The growing opposition is beginning to band together.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, another long-time Trump defender, has joined forces with Washington Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell to spearhead legislation to wrest tariff control from the president back to Congress.
The long-shot bill, introduced Thursday, would require the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of the imposition of any tariff, while Congress would have to explicitly approve any new tariffs within 60 days.
The bill also would allow Congress to end any tariff at any time.
“For too long, Congress has delegated its clear authority to regulate interstate and foreign commerce to the executive branch,” Grassley said in a statement.
Four Republican senators — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Maine’s Susan Collins and Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell — also joined forces Wednesday in a 51-48 Senate vote adopting a resolution to nullify the national emergency Trump declared last month in order to implement 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports.
The vote was the Senate’s first major break with Trump since the start of his second term.
