Former President Donald Trump’s preference for heavy tariffs on foreign-made goods may play well in Maine, where bipartisan opposition to free-trade deals has been a decades-long theme.
The Republican is looking to greatly expand on the tariffs that he put into place during his first term and that President Joe Biden’s administration has mostly kept them in place. But the Trump-era tariffs prompted a trade war that at least initially hurt lobstermen, wild blueberry farmers and others in legacy industries that enjoy solid support from politicians here.
Economists believe that Trump’s plan would lead to a lower gross domestic product, higher prices and another trade war that could reduce access to foreign markets. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has criticized that plan. Yet Trump’s tariffs are supported by both candidates in Maine’s swing congressional race.
Maine’s congressional delegation and state lawmakers have leaned toward “populism and trade protectionism, but at same time, we have our leaders saying we really need more market access,” Kristin Vekasi, a University of Maine political scientist and trade expert, said.
“Like many places, we’d like to have it both ways,” Vekasi said.
As Trump faces Harris in a race that national polls deem a coin toss, Trump said he wants 10 percent to 20 percent tariffs on foreign countries “that have been ripping us off for years. He wants more than 60 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. Harris has backed Biden’s more targeted tariffs on Chinese imports, including a 100 percent rate on electric vehicles.
Maine is the lone state that produces wild blueberries commercially. In the last decade, they caught on in China as a luxury superfruit. But after Trump took office and imposed hefty tariffs, Maine’s farmers struggled as China retaliated with 80 percent tariffs on frozen wild blueberries. Exports plummeted from $2.5 million in 2017 to around $60,000 in 2019.
The Trump administration sought in 2018 to bail out certain agricultural producers hurt by the trade war with China, but wild blueberry farmers did not qualify for the subsidies. Asked about the latest tariff plans from Trump and Harris, Eric Venturini, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine, said Thursday he had no comment.
Maine-dominated lobster exports responded differently. While they dropped in 2019 and 2020 amid retaliatory tariffs from China and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, they rose later while becoming an increasingly popular Chinese New Year delicacy. In the heat of Trump’s 2020 campaign with Biden, Trump directed trade offset aid to the fishery.
The results of the November election and any new round of steep tariffs on Chinese goods could cause Maine farmers, lobstermen and even downstream suppliers to lose market access and money. Canada and Maine remain staunch allies with $7.5 billion a year in trading.
Tariff critics have also gone after Biden for keeping nearly all of Trump’s tariffs in place. The Tax Foundation said the levies amounted to a roughly $80 billion a year tax increase, making it a factor in the high costs that have dampened Americans’ feelings about the economic recovery from the worst period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trade politics have a nuanced past in Maine. The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement may have cost the state hundreds of manufacturing jobs, according to a study for the Legislature, which took a unanimous symbolic vote in 2016 against a Pacific trade deal that Trump shut down and that Biden did not restart while favoring more limited agreements. Former Republican Gov. Paul LePage was even viewed as a key intermediary between Trump and Canada amid tense talks around replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2017.
Not all business leaders in Maine are opposed to aggressive tariffs on Chinese competitors. Auburn Manufacturing Inc. CEO Kathie Leonard, who hosted Biden at her heat-resistant textile company last year and backed him in 2020, has credited Trump for his foreign trade policies.
The company won big in 2017 when a federal ruling found Chinese fabrics were unfairly cheap and hurting the manufacturer, with a resulting tariff of up to 300 percent on such fabrics still in place today. She said defending U.S. industries with strong tariffs is “critical.”
“In order to win this trade war, Americans need to be willing to pay a bit more for a U.S. product made by American workers,” Leonard said.
Tariffs are a major issue in Maine’s rural 2nd Congressional District, which has an important manufacturing history and was won twice by Trump. Third-term U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Lewiston, is facing state Rep. Austin Theriault, a Republican from Fort Kent.
Both have outlined similar stances on trade. Golden said in May he supports tariff policies from Trump and Biden as part of “a new reality in the world economy and a new recognition about the ways in which free trade has failed America.”
Theriault is “a strong, consistent advocate for protecting Maine workers through tough tariffs on bad actors such as China,” Shawn Roderick, his campaign manager, said.
The campaigns are still sniping at each other. Theriault’s campaign pointed to a 2018 candidate forum in which Golden said he did not support tariffs. Golden noted Theriault’s voting record in the Legislature, which resulted in the liberal Maine AFL-CIO rating him lowly in its 2023 scorecard, comparing the Republican’s talk to “a cheap pair of boots that come apart in a year.”
“The old free trade paradigm is broken,” Golden said in a Friday statement. “I believe that America needs to once again become a nation of producers, not simply consumers of cheap and often unreliable foreign goods and food.”
