House Democrat says Trump is 'off to a good start' with tariff threats on Mexico and Canada

• Trump said he plans to impose a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian imports, plus 10% on Chinese imports.
• Democrats have generally opposed Trump's tariff plans — but at least one is offering him praise.
• Rep. Jared Golden, who previously introduced a 10% tariff bill, says Trump's "off to a good start."

President-elect Donald Trump is winning praise from one House Democrat over his recent threat to impose tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and China.

"I think Trump's off to a good start there," Rep. Jared Golden, a centrist Democrat who represents a GOP-leaning congressional district in Maine, told Business Insider at the Capitol on Thursday.

Golden isn't your average Democrat. While many in his party — including Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee — have long panned Trump's tariff plans as a burdensome tax on consumers, Golden has embraced the idea as a way to spur growth in domestic industries.

In September, Golden introduced a bill that mirrored Trump's proposal for a 10% tariff on all foreign imports. Under Golden's "Balance Unequal International Labor and Trade for the United States of America" (BUILT USA) Act, that tariff would increase by 5% for every year that the United States maintains a trade deficit.

Other Democrats have taken the opposite approach, citing economists who say that the costs of tariffs would be passed on to regular consumers. Reps. Suzan DelBene of Washington and Don Beyer of Virginia recently introduced a bill that would block Trump from unilaterally imposing tariffs via executive order.

Trump recently said that he "can't guarantee" that Americans won't pay higher prices as the result of tariffs.

The president-elect's latest tariff proposal includes a 25% tax on imports from Mexico and Canada. In a November Truth Social post, Trump said he would sign an executive order to impose those tariffs on the first day of his presidency, and that they would remain "until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country."

He announced a 10% tariff on China that same day, blaming the country for the "massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States."

Golden pointed out on Thursday that both parties have embraced tariffs in recent years, citing President Joe Biden's decision to maintain tariffs that Trump had instituted during his first term. "We've had eight years of bipartisan executive branch consensus on tariffs," he said.

"Tariffs alone are not necessarily good or bad. They've got their positives and negatives," said Golden. The congressman said he'd like to see Trump's tariffs coupled with other policies, such as investments in domestic manufacturing and subsidized American-made goods to offset potential retaliatory tariffs from other countries.

"All of those things in combination, I think, can make for good economic policy. They don't stand necessarily well on one foot," said Golden. "I think we've seen some of that in the last four years and a little bit in the four years before that."

"You don't just take an economy that's been heading in wrong direction for decades and turn it around like that," Golden said, snapping his fingers.