Senator John Fetterman broke with the Democrat party over President Donald Trump’s tariffs to admit the policy is ‘going well’.
Since winning his seat in 2023, the Pennsylvanian has become a loud voice on Capitol Hill.
In March, he previously disagreed with Trump’s policy, telling The Hill he didn’t understand why the US leader was ‘picking all of these kind of tariffs with our allies’, especially with the US and Mexico.
‘There might be issues like fentanyl or some of those, but that doesn’t mean we have to punch them in the mouth, because that’s not making America great.’
But now he has praised the president’s sweeping tariffs, as well as liberal comedian Bill Maher who also recently came to the same conclusion.
‘I’m a huge fan of Bill Maher, and I mean, I think he’s really one of the oracles for my party, and he acknowledged it. It’s like, hey, he thought that the tariffs were going to tank the economy, and then he acknowledged that it didn’t,’ Fetterman told Fox News Digital.
‘So, for me, it seems like the EU thing has been going well, and I guess we’ll see how it happens with China.’
Maher, a comedian and host of HBO Real Time, acknowledged he jumped the gun in his most recent episode of his Club Random podcast, where he cited his own estimation that the tariffs would have destroyed the US economy ‘by July’.
Senator John Fetterman broke with the Democrat party’s stance on President Donald Trump ‘s tariffs , as he admitted its ‘going well’
‘I remember I, along with probably most people, were saying at the beginning, “Oh, you know, by the 4th of July”,’ Maher recalled. ‘The economy was going to be tanked by then.
‘But that didn’t happen,’ Maher, who met Trump at the White House in April, said.
Many Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, have balked at Trump’s tariff policy and many said it would lead to increased consumer prices.
Fetterman’s comments came as Trump signed an executive order Thursday that would have new tariffs on dozens of US trading partners to go into effect in seven days.
Trump imposed a 35 percent tariff on all Canadian goods not covered by the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
Trump’s 35 percent tariff was announced amidst a string of surprise modifications to his reciprocal tariffs on Thursday.
His executive order was issued shortly after 7pm. It came after a flurry of tariff-related activity in recent days, as the White House announced agreements with various nations and blocs ahead of Trump’s self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline.
Trump had already secured about a dozen deals, with a mix between formal signed agreements and announced frameworks.
Fetterman’s comments as Trump signed an executive order Thursday that would have new tariffs on dozens of US trading partners to go into effect in seven days
Maher, a comedian and host of HBO Real Time, acknowledged he jumped the gun in his most recent episode of his Club Random podcast, where he cited his own estimation that the tariffs would have destroyed the US economy ‘by July’
But it was still far short of the ’90 deals in 90 days’ touted by Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro back in April.
He has been using changing deadlines – and the threats of high US tariffs he has announced publicly – to try to leverage the opening of foreign markets while bringing down the tariffs paid on imports.
To sell the push to Americans, he has been touting new tariff revenues, with $150 billion collected in July, while floating new rebate checks.
As per the new levies, Switzerland has been hit with a 39 percent tariff, Syria was lobbed a 41 percent tariff, Laos and Myanmar each received a 40 percent tariff and Iraq and Serbia joined Canada with a 35 percent tariff.
Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Libya and South Africa all were handed 30 percent tariffs.