Tariffs’ Messy Reality: The Cost-of-Living Election | Part 1: Ohio

0:00How much of your workday is actually work and how much is just hunting for information? That's the problem Amazon Quick was built to solve. Quick is an intelligent workplace assistant that connects all your systems, your documents, dashboards, Salesforce, Jira, Slack, email, and gives you complete answers in seconds and turns them into action. Create a deck, update a ticket, send a message, right there in the conversation without switching tools. It's AI that actually works the way you do. Learn more at aws.com slash quick. When you ask Katrina McAvoy if she blames her job loss on tariffs, she has just one answer.

0:35I don't see how you cannot when they're saying it's easier for them to make money eating the cost of the tariffs than to keep people employed. We're sitting just outside the doors of a factory owned by her employer, for now, Conselmer. They make brass instruments like trumpets and trombones in East Lake, Ohio, a 20-minute drive from Cleveland. Katrina's wearing a Conselmer t-shirt under a red cardigan, but the shirt isn't especially important to her. Nope, I have several in the closet, and then I guess they just get donated once we close. I don't know. I don't want to put it back on. At the end of June, Conselmer says all 150 employees at the plant will be terminated.

1:15It's moving much of the operation offshore to China. Katrina and her colleagues got their notices the same day I spoke with her. In fact, my uncle, who is getting close to 80, this was one of his first jobs. How did you feel about the president's tariffs before the closure of this plan? I didn't think it was a good idea at all. We're supposed to, you know, it's to the point where you can't find anything where it says made in America anymore. And I think that's sad for the country in a whole. Of course, made in America is the whole point of President Trump's tariffs in his telling. By making it more expensive to import goods to the United States, the idea is that factories will want to avoid those tariffs by making things here instead of shipping them here.

1:58Critics of the tariffs say they'll just drive up costs for everyone. But what I found in Ohio is that how companies navigate the new tariff regime depends on their supply chains, their finances, and maybe even their relationships with President Trump. And whatever companies are feeling, their customers, American consumers and voters, have seen their cost of living go up. So much so that Democrats from the sidelines in Washington succeeded last year in pushing a new term to describe that economic reality. Affordability crisis. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui, and this is What's New Sunday. Today and over the next couple of months, we'll be hitting the road to report on the cost of everything from manufacturing to food to housing.

2:42And to see what the rising cost of living means for primaries ahead of November's midterm elections, including for the Republicans in control of Congress and the Democrats who are trying to define their identity and see an opportunity to retake the House and maybe even the Senate. This is The Cost of Living Election Part 1. In this episode, we'll look at how President Trump's trade policy is playing out on the ground in Ohio, which holds primary elections this Tuesday. Then I'll talk to some of my Wall Street Journal colleagues about what the manufacturing sector's challenges mean for hotly contested races in this state, including a Senate race that could affect the balance of power in Washington.

3:25At Conselmer, not everyone agrees with Katrina McAvoy. Robert Hines, the president of the union at the plant, says tariffs aren't necessarily the problem, even if they didn't save the factory. I think they're a good thing if they're executed right. I think they need to be tightly and more strategically placed, especially in manufacturing, like tariffs on brass instruments would be major. Hines works on sousaphones, a massive instrument in the Tuba family. He says a lot of workers at the plant voted for Trump and believed his trade policies would help them. According to them, Conselmer's mismanagement is to blame for the plant's demise.

4:04Hines also points out that the owner of Conselmer, the hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, was on CNBC in 2024, talking up then-candidate Trump's tariffs as a way to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S. We've lost thousands of factories, millions of jobs to foreigners because of the unfair trade competition. So what Trump wants to do is create an American manufacturing powerhouse and using tariffs as a way to level the playing field. Paulson and the president are close, or at least they have been in the past. He hosted a fundraiser for Trump in the lead up to his re-election, and he was even in the running to lead the Treasury Department.

4:46Hines says Trump should take advantage of his ties with Paulson to keep the plant open. We're asking for President Trump to step in, you know, honestly. That's our angle. We think that he has a close relationship with John Paulson, and this is a great time for him to step up and show that he can put his money where his mouth is as far as trades and tariffs. In a statement to us, Conselmer said the decision to close the plant will concentrate its professional brass manufacturing at an existing plant in Elkhart, Indiana, and that it remains, quote, deeply committed to U.S. manufacturing. Conselmer is a subsidiary of Steinway, the iconic piano maker filed to go public in 2022 before dropping that idea the following year.

5:29But in its filing documents, Steinway said tariffs, including retaliatory ones, could slow their production of instruments and, quote, harm our business, reputation, and relationships with our customers. It also identified China as a growing market, thanks to consumers' increasing discretionary spending and government support for music and the arts. China's gain may be Eastlake's loss. But in under two hours, you can drive to a factory, a much bigger one, that says it's winning as a result of President Trump's trade policy.

6:04At Whirlpool's washing machine factory in Clyde, Ohio, they take safety pretty seriously. What you're being outfitted with here is some protective equipment, some safety glasses, some earplugs, and then also some toe caps to ensure safety during any part of your visit to the plant today. This plant is as big as 30 football fields put together. At full tilt, it can pump out 22 ,000 washing machines a day. On the day I visited last month, Whirlpool announced a new production facility, its sixth in the state of Ohio, that in the next two years will create between 100 and 150 new jobs. That's roughly as many as will be lost at Conselmer in Eastlake.

6:47The way Whirlpool sees it, the Trump administration's tariffs are leveling the playing field. The company's CEO, Mark Bitzer, brought up the phrase five times in my sit-down with him. In the past, we didn't feel we have a level playing field. That largely came, to give you a little bit of context, because foreign competitors basically operate with subsidized steel. You know, we pay about two and a half times or three times more for a ton of steel than our competitors. In other words, China subsidizes its steel, which makes it artificially cheaper. Taxing it through tariffs makes U.S.-made steel more competitive by comparison.

7:23And steel is a big deal for Whirlpool. Witzer says it makes up half the weight of a washing machine. In recent years, 96 % of the steel Whirlpool uses is made in the U.S. So they're not paying tariffs on that. But that metal is more expensive than what they would get from China. Last year, Trump doubled the tariffs on steel from 25 to 50%. percent. Whirlpool's U.S. competitors now have to pay more for foreign steel. And that's basically fine by Whirlpool, even though it pays certain tariffs too. So we paid last year$250,$300 million. It's not nothing. But our assumption has always been that competitors who don't produce here, they will have to pay a lot more.

8:05One remaining trouble spot for Bitzer is the Chinese components, like electronics, displays, and some motors that would be difficult to make in the U.S. Whirlpool pays tariffs on those. But Bitzer says foreign competitors outside of China who plug those same components into finished products before exporting them are off the hook. That is the part where we pay tariffs. But if a competitor uses exactly the same component, puts them in a washing machine, they don't pay a tariff on their components. So it is a little bit of frustration, which we still have. The Trump administration's U.S. trade representative, Jameson Greer, was also at the Whirlpool event.

8:40He told me it's inevitable that some things won't be produced in the U.S. Obviously, there are things that we're not going to make in the U.S. We need to bring from overseas, and so we still have a ton of trade. But we have to be in a situation where we have resilient supply chains, and we're seeing companies reshore. By reshore, Greer means bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. from overseas. Now listen, I know that multinationals, they don't want to change their supply chains. There's friction when they do that. We know that, but we have to change it. Greer points to growth in manufacturing productivity in the U.S., and production has indeed gone up by 2.3 percent since Trump's return to the White House in January 2025.

9:19But manufacturing jobs are on the decline. Since the start of Trump 2.0, they've fallen by about 100 ,000 workers, or roughly 0.6 percent. Even Whirlpool, while announcing new jobs in Ohio, cut jobs elsewhere. Earlier this year, it laid off more than 300 workers in Iowa. Bitzer told me that that factory was simply losing money. Most Americans are against Trump's tariffs. In a recent survey by CNBC, 59 % of respondents disapproved of the president's handling of them. As for manufacturers in the region, a Cleveland Fed survey conducted in May 2025 found that most respondents, usually CEOs, presidents, or CFOs, said they expected higher tariffs to have a negative net impact on their businesses.

10:08But for voters, the true impact of tariffs could be tough to make out. And how that factors into their votes this year remains to be seen. We'll dig into it after the break.

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11:07We just saw how tariffs are affecting manufacturers in various and sometimes opposite ways. For more on that and on how voters in Ohio and elsewhere feel about tariffs, I'm joined by Wall Street Journal reporters Erin Zittner and Gavin Bade. Gavin, you just heard our reporting from Ohio. Put this in context for us. How have tariffs changed businesses' plans across the country? Yeah, I think you really encapsulated in your reporting there the idea that tariffs are a double-edged sword, right? It's a very nuanced and convoluted subject to see how these tariffs kind of affect different companies.

11:42We don't see the huge swings in tariff policy that we saw in spring of 2025, where, you know, know, we had 150 almost percent tariffs on China and then they were paused, they were taken down. What you do see, though, is the administration preparing to put tariffs on other specific industries, whether this is like industrial robots or we're waiting for their semiconductor tariffs. And so even though it is more settled than it was this time last year, it's still very unsettled for businesses compared to, you know, any other administration. So a lot of kind of compliance issues and things for companies to still sift through here.

12:20Walmart and other companies have said tariffs have forced them to raise prices. I stopped by a Walmart parking lot in Cleveland where a few voters told me they feel inflation firsthand. What do you think is responsible for these higher prices? Oh, I don't know. Just fluctuate. No, it's like stupid tariffs and just irregularities of oil. I mean, it's just the chaos. Chaos does not allow for stability in pricing. I think we all know the tariffs did a lot of damage for our economy. I do feel like for us middle-class citizens, things have definitely become more challenging and definitely declined.

12:56Let's talk about what that could mean for political races in Ohio. There's a primary here this Tuesday where Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, is looking to win back a seat in the U.S. Senate. in November will most likely be Brown facing the GOP incumbent John Husted, who was appointed after J.D. Vance left the seat for the vice presidency. Our colleague Cam McWhorter has been reporting from Ohio as well and told us Sherrod Brown is really focused on the economy. The economy is the story in Ohio. Brown is out there talking about Trump's tariffs, the cost of living. He's talking about job security. That is his message.

13:34It's the economy. and the economy's not going well. But in an interview with ABC, John Husted also broke with President Trump on tariffs. Do you agree with Trump's proposed tariffs? Tariffs are an interesting challenge. I'm typically not in favor of anything that would be a tax or a tariff or something like that. Aaron, how are tariffs factoring into this race?

13:59Sabrina Siddiqui:First of all, just in the persona and profile of Sherrod Brown. I mean, he's part of an old school of Democrat that goes back to the early 1990s. And Brown, in one of his early votes as a House member, voted against NAFTA and just stuck with that old pro-labor skepticism of free trade. He wrote a book in the early 2000s called Myths of Free Trade. He's proposed labeling China as a currency manipulator. He always supported tariffs on China to protect us from Chinese imports. It's just who he is. And then more specifically, tariffs have become a centerpiece of a dispute between him and John Husted.

14:40Now that the Supreme Court has ruled many of the Trump tariffs to be illegal, Sherrod Brown is saying, hey, Ohio families paid for those tariffs.

14:49Sabrina Siddiqui:I want to see a$1 ,300 rebate go to each Ohio family. And Husted apparently is saying, well, it's businesses that paid the tariffs. The money should go to businesses. Right. So about, he said, what do you make of the position he finds himself in? Well, let's spin back a little bit to the 2024 election. Tariffs were never very popular in our polling. They did not get more than 50 percent support. When you looked at other things Trump was saying, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, that was polling with, you know, 75, 80 percent support. And since he came in, support for tariffs has only declined further.

15:27Sabrina Siddiqui:And frankly, his support of tariffs is a drag on the president's ratings on the economy, which have been underwater and negative for quite a long time now. Going back to Sherrod Brown, Gavin, how is Brown balancing his longtime criticism of free trade and now challenging Republicans on their tariffs? Yeah, I think this is a really interesting kind of test case for Democrats nationwide. wide, how do they run against the president's trade agenda? You know, Brown himself has long supported tariffs, not only on China, but on individual industries like steel and aluminum that Trump has done. So I think the challenge for him is, can he stick to espousing targeted tariffs on specific industries like steel, maybe even automobiles, and then criticizing the broader Trump agenda of doing, you know, an across the board tariff of 10 % that ends up just basically being a sales tax on many goods for American voters.

16:21So I think we'll see how he's able to handle that there. We'll see how Democrats up in Michigan, where there's an open primary and a Senate election as well, will handle that. You haven't seen any of those candidates say, I support all of Trump's tariffs, right? They're kind of trying to have a Goldilocks approach, not too much and not too little. I will espouse support for tariffs on my favorite protected industry, be that the automotive industry, the steel industry, there are pockets of really important voters who are really supportive of specific tariffs. The UAW, the United Auto Workers, obviously extremely influential voting bloc in the state of Michigan, super, super supportive of the president's automotive tariffs and are really politically active and whip voters on that issue, right?

17:05Democrats want to keep these blue collar voters in their tent.

17:08Sabrina Siddiqui:One thing we can point out is that Donald Trump won Ohio by 11 points in the last election, which was better than in 2020. Sherrod Brown at the same time lost by three and a half. So there are a set of voters who are willing to look at Sherrod Brown and at Donald Trump at the same time. There are crossover voters. And that gives him an opportunity to speak to voters who are politically in the middle and focusing on the economy is probably a path into the hearts of those swing voters. When prices go up, do voters blame tariffs? I think it was really interesting what one of the voters said about the uncertainty, because I think that's something that businesses and employees both feel.

17:53And I think voters see that as well. So do they identify individual discrete policies that are raising prices? Maybe yes, maybe no. But they definitely feel the kind of rising tide of prices. And that's going to raise voter antipathy just generally against the president's economic agenda. Aaron, do voters connect tariffs back to Republican candidates more generally? And do you blame Democrats at all?

18:18Sabrina Siddiqui:Trump calls himself tariff man. I mean, he's defined himself as the tariff guy. So I don't think there's any way as a Republican to divorce yourself from that image unless you work really hard to define yourself differently. It's pretty clear that tariffs as of now have settled into kind of a 60-40 proposition. Pew found support for Trump's tariffs to be about 60-40. When we asked back during the presidential campaign about tariffs, more than other economic proposals on the table, people said, I'm not sure. I don't know enough to give you an opinion about tariffs. Well, now there's been a year and a half of people experiencing a tariff economy and Trump's use of tariffs.

19:02Sabrina Siddiqui:And those people who don't know, they seem to have moved over to the not liking tariffs camp. Yeah, I think it's really important what Aaron said that, you know, voters who are unsure about tariffs have largely decided that they don't like them. And I think that that is because, you know, even if you give the administration the most charitable case you can, they haven't achieved the goals that they said tariffs would achieve, right? Right. Ambassador Greer can go to the Whirlpool factory or go to an automotive factory as much as he wants. That doesn't change the fact that we've lost almost 100 ,000 manufacturing jobs.

19:34Right. And at the same time, prices are going up for many different classes of goods. I mean, how do you expect voters to react to that? Aaron, a Fox News poll from a couple of weeks ago found that Democrats top Republicans on the economy for the first time since 2010. How big of a deal is that?

19:51Sabrina Siddiqui:I think it's hugely significant. And one thing that's my inference from looking at the polling is it's very hard to get people to change their priors. If you voted for Trump, you're very hesitant to say I made a mistake. So we're not seeing a lot of defections when we ask people, did you vote for Trump? And do you approve of him? People kind of are sticking with him. But when we ask which party is better on handling the economy, that's where I think people are taking out their unhappiness. And a cushion that Republicans used to have as the party scene is better able to handle these issues, particularly economic issues, is eroding.

20:32Sabrina Siddiqui:So I have to infer that some of these people who say, well, I still like Trump, are also saying, I don't quite trust the Republican Party anymore on the economy. And if Republicans are losing on the economy, one of their top issues, that's a pretty bad sign. That was The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Zittner and Gavin Bade. Aaron, Gavin, thank you. Good to be with you. Thanks, Sabrina. And that's it for this first episode of The Cost of Living Election, part of The Wall Street Journal's What's News. This episode was produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé. It was mixed by Pierre Bien-Aimé and Michael Lavelle, who also wrote our music.

21:11Editorial oversight from Joshua Jamerson, Chris Zinsley, and Tali Arbel. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui, and I'll be back soon with our next installment. Thanks for listening.

21:28What's driving the markets this week? What's on investors' minds as they look ahead? Find out on the Markets Podcast from Goldman Sachs. A breakdown of market moves and macro signals in 10 minutes or less. The Markets Podcast from Goldman Sachs. Listen now.