Astead W. Herndon
Appearances
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
They made up the type of working class base that bolstered the party in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, electorally important places. But now the Democrats have kind of changed, become more cosmopolitan, become more college educated, become more overtly liberal.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
I think they have to ask themselves, do they still care to calibrate their message to the language of their traditional working class base? Or have they changed?
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
So, why this moment? Well, I think that I wanted there to be some time for things to set in, and I have had the experience before of the year after an election, a lot of the electorate, particularly the folks I spend a lot of time with, people who are not hyper-politics obsessed, they're news consumers in a huge way, they often step back from politics in that year after. They disconnect.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Well, I think it's been interesting to see how different parts of the party are responding to this issue. And they've taken a couple different options.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
A few of them, I'm thinking about folks like Senator Cory Booker, have done a universal condemnation of tariffs, saying there's no equivocation, tariffs are bad. But most Democrats have tried to find a middle road option.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
There have been people who say that maybe Republicans profited or there were things like insider trading that's been happening in the stock market.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Saying that Donald Trump is going to pass along a tax to regular people as the rich get exempted. Right. And then there's been the other piece, which I think is embodied by folks like Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
— This kind of middle-of-the-road approach that acknowledged tariffs can be something that Americans should use more, but just saying that Trump is not using them correctly. I've also seen this from Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
It does. And I think that, you know, the easier thing to do would be that universal condemnation. But as you're saying, that would immediately put them at odds, maybe not with working class Americans all across the board, but certainly working class Americans in Michigan. Right. A deeply important electoral state. Other states, we know Ohio, Pennsylvania have gone through some of this stuff, too.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And so because the impacts of this are specifically felt in these states that have this vital importance, it's put the national party at a place where it can't really do that easily understood universal rejection. And they've left themselves with this sort of maybe tariffs are OK, but Trump's imposing it wrong. Or maybe there's a piece of this we should highlight.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
But it's not been a cohesive message. And so I think that that is the reason why I call it an important window into that identity crisis, because you're getting splintered messages rather than one universal one.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Disconnect, you know? They got lives. unlike us, you know? And it felt like this moment was the time to check back in, specifically around tariffs. And just explain why. Yeah, I mean, obviously, this has become his signature economic policy.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Yeah. And I want to say it's important to me, like, I don't really hold them accountable for not having a singular message right now, right? Like, the time after an election is identity crisis, right? This is going to play out for years in the party and will not be really solved until the 2027-8 primary.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
But I do think it's important to note that when we use terms like working class realignment or the party needing to get back in touch with its base, these are the type of issues we're talking about. And these are the type of conflicts it can create. Democrats have a unique challenge with the diversity of their voters. Republicans are much more monolithic.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
So Democrats have more classes, more races, more demographics. And finding an issue that cuts across all those groups is legitimately harder. If they say they want to get closer to their working class base, that might put them at odds with another portion of the base.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
My experience would say it sounds somewhat like Donald Trump, honestly. It sounds like disruption. It sounds like change. It sounds like making political systems work better, right? The thing I think Donald Trump challenges with Democrats specifically is the disruption to institutions that he is intentionally doing right now have, I think, created an instinct among some Democrats to just protect.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Right. But among the people we talk to, those institutions are unpopular.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And there's a sense that they have already failed. So what I find is the important distinction for Democrats is are they going to be protector or improver of these things? And protector just means Donald Trump is bad. What he's doing right here is bad. Improver means independent of him. Here's what we're going to do to make that better. And I think that cuts across a lot of issues.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Economy, doge, immigration. I think it's basically the same challenge is asking themselves, is it just opposition or Which can work, right? They can be a vessel of discontent, and that worked for them the same way it worked for Donald Trump a couple years ago. Or are they going to have a competing vision?
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And I think when it comes to things like this, that's what we're hearing from voters, is they feel like they don't know what the Democratic vision is to improve their lives, specifically economically, and bring back manufacturing jobs, right? That, to me, is the choice they have on their hands.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And it's his signature economic policy after an election where he was largely successful because people attributed his competency on the economy to being preferable to Democrats. I mean, we heard more about groceries and eggs and all that stuff last year than any other issue.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Right. Creating a causal relationship between their signature economic policy and prices going up.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And so if the forecast is real and these tariffs stay in place and we do see that inflation or we do have a recession or all of those kind of things that have been swirling, it is very clear to me and that this is also true in the numbers and polling that people don't talk about Biden's economy anymore. They're talking about Trump's economy.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And so if that materially gets worse, I think this White House will be blamed for that. And that creates the perfect conditions for Democrats to have a good midterms and feel good about 2028. And that has nothing to do with their own vision. That's what I'm saying. Totally plausible. Like, and so, you know, there's some ways you can think about vision.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And I think it's going to become important and things like the primary things going on. You can see different parts of the party and coalition. But I'm like, all of that will be meaningless if we have a Donald Trump induced recession. And I think even our discussions with these people, that's their threshold, too. Right now, it seems like the chaos they're kind of used to.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Donald Trump up against his usual enemies. And I think there is some leeway for the deal, negotiation, things like that. But the guy who says he'll eat a rat for Donald Trump is the exception. If those prices increase, the only person who will be blamed for that is the president. And if you're a Democrat, that's the best thing that could happen for the prospect of the party returning the power.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And so considering, I think, the shock of the Liberation Day announcement, the sweeping nature of it, and the prospect of increased inflation in the future, it just crystallized, I think, a moment that feels like we're finally in the Trump presidency. Right. Like we've turned the page from the kind of Biden moment to him kind of reshaping policy and government itself.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
If we see the inflation, we'll see the backlash.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And it's so kind of total and complete in a way that I thought it was a higher likelihood that it's cut through to people and they might have some sense of reaction.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Well, the first person that came to mind is a woman named Monica.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Monica is someone we met last spring, and we tracked how she kind of made her decision on who to vote for throughout the months leading up to the election. I wanted to know how you ended up voting.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And I thought of Monica specifically for a couple reasons. One, she lives in Michigan, kind of home of auto industry. She's a fourth-generation auto worker. And then most specifically, I remember her explaining to me after the election that tariffs were part of the reason she voted for Donald Trump.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
The plant that she works at is a Chrysler plant, which is owned by Stellantis, and it's been going through a lot of changes over the last several years. And actually, the car that she was making got outsourced to Mexico, and she's been laid off for several months.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And so one thing that Monica said was that she liked the idea that Trump was talking about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America and that tariffs were his tool to do so.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Right. So whether it's the campaign trail or his announcement on April 2nd that specifically mentions Delantis, Monica is directly in the middle of the impacts of Trump's policy and a voter who I think represents the type of optimism that surrounded kind of Trump's economic pitch. And so I was wondering what the expectations to reality were specifically with someone like her.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
OK. So I wanted to meet Monica in person. So me, along with producer Anna Foley, headed to Michigan. And we met at a brewery that is near her hometown. And it's about 30-ish minutes outside of Detroit. And when we met her, my first question was just, how has she been since the election? And what was her reaction to kind of the first hundred-ish days of Trump?
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And simply, her response was, you know, a mixed bag.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
She mentioned a couple things, and they really reflect some of the other voters we've been checking in with also. So before the election, you didn't have a big opinion on tariffs, or did you?
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
An idea that they thought these tariffs were going to focus specifically on places like China or places like Mexico, not be sweeping and include, you know, random islands like Heard Island and McDonald Island are getting tariffs. Right, the ones without people on them. Yes, inhabited by penguins. Poor penguins. She mentioned how the uncertainty causes real instability.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Finances needs, hey, if you do A and B, then we will do C. And so I think that, you know, there was a kind of understanding that Donald Trump means disruption, right? That Donald Trump means chaos. It's just that on this issue specifically, this isn't what she was expecting.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And I think this overlaps with a lot of other voters we talked to who were expecting Donald Trump to focus on bringing prices down. So she's somewhat skeptical. She is somewhat skeptical. However...
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
There was still remaining amounts of hope that the uncertainty in the short term would bring back the job in the longer term. She's still holding on to the kind of economic premise that Trump lays out that say that this could actually be a runway for him to cut some deals with these companies or deals with other nations that open up a space that could bring manufacturing jobs back.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
So it reminded me that although the branding of Donald Trump can feel tiresome and I think can feel like political spin. It's potent. It's potent. And it really is the number one way a lot of lay people have come to him is a sense that he is a kind of assumed level of competence when it comes to business and the economy.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
It earns Trump a level of trust with her, and it gives him some sort of runway to see how this policy plays out. Now, I think we should also say that some of that runway is built on her individual kind of preference for Trump, but it's also about her lack of trust in Democrats. When we ask her, has this kind of chaos made you feel regretful about voting for Trump or things like that, she says no.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
One, she feels as if she's happy with her choice, she made the choice, and she feels fine about it. But she really mentioned something I think is really important, that she felt that Trump had at least diagnosed a real problem in her life, which is that she feels as if these free trade agreements have, in the macro, pulled these jobs away from her community.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And she doesn't feel as if Democrats named that problem or have provided a solution for it.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Right. She has a really specific interaction with this because, as you remember, President Biden actually came to Michigan to walk the picket line as UAW workers were striking.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And Monica's in the UAW, right? Yeah, he was there on behalf of her. Right, right, right. We're talking about people whose union beliefs are really core to their identity, core to their work, core to their family and their family story here. And so when we asked her about it, like, why doesn't Biden get credit? Why don't Democrats get credit for kind of supporting you in that effort?
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
As a union member, I was glad that he supported our right to strike.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
But it's not as if Biden being there really did anything about our bigger issue, which is that we're losing these jobs in a long-term sense.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And she was saying that when Trump came, yeah, he wasn't supporting a right to strike.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
He was saying none of this matters if y'all don't have a job. And she was saying she really agreed with that framing of the issue. And honestly, she felt that only tariffs were being presented as the type of solution that could rectify the issue.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
It was. And so all of this adds up to a real runway that Trump has to speak to that problem. Because she feels as if she is confident that she cast her vote for at least the guy who's trying to do something. And that all adds up to her to being much more powerful than the symbolic measures she felt the Democrats were giving.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Absolutely. I posed that direct question to her, and she kind of shrugged it off. She believes that the reasons Delantis laid those folks off is much more about a change in what car they were producing, not the tariffs.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And, you know, I was surprised by that answer. But she was not creating a causal relationship between Trump's tariffs and those layoffs. But in the same way, she's not in confusion that this might be a little overly optimistic, the idea that her job would come back because of tariffs. She actually says she isn't sure if it's going to work out.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And she says that, you know, she wouldn't even blame Trump if her job doesn't come back or if these tariffs do cause kind of more job losses. It's a pretty fascinating thing to say. Yeah. And again, it goes back to that diagnosis of a problem. She thinks that a problem has been true for 15, 20 years. Folks haven't talked about it.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And that at this point, Trump has so much leeway on this front because she feels as if no one was kind of taking up this cause. And so even if he fails, she's going to give him credit for trying. And, you know, it wasn't just Monica. Yeah. Monica actually took us over to a Chrysler plant. How far are we?
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Where she herself worked. Where she herself worked. Mom's spaghetti. Mom's spaghetti. Of course, because this is Detroit, we were quite literally on 8 Mile Road of Eminem fame. Do you need to interpret that for the daily listeners? No, I mean, if you can't get that, it wasn't meant for you. And we were talking with workers who were getting off of their shift. Hey, how's it going?
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
My name's Esteban. This is Anna. We're from the New York Times. Asking them about the tariffs, about Trump's policy, about the prospect of inflation. And it was remarkable how we heard much of the same things that we heard from Monica. I think what Trump's doing is awesome.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
For people who supported Trump, who worked at that plant, they were saying that they have a real runway for him because they really trust and hope he'll bring this job back.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
They were talking about that same problem diagnosis as important.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
One guy told us he doesn't care if prices go up.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
So how do you feel about it? Kind of 50-50?
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
I'm a survivalist. That was a level of thinking about, like, partisan kinship among the Republicans. But even when we were talking to people who seemed more middle-of-the-road or even some people who were Democrats or voted against Donald Trump, they weren't acting as if the sky is falling.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And I keep going back to this thing about the diagnosing an issue, because I think about this one guy we talked to who was a Democrat, who voted for Kamala Harris, said he hated Donald Trump. And even he was saying to me, he can't ignore the fact that Democrats put
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And so he was saying that even as he was upset with Donald Trump and the prospect of tariffs and the uncertainty that it caused, he was acknowledging, though, that same kind of problem diagnosis that led Monica to vote for him. You were helpful to talk to. Thank you.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
Being at the plant and hearing that kind of range of voices really just reminded me about the kind of shrapnel from this kind of political bomb, you know, and the ways that Trump fractures. And by bomb you mean the Trump bomb. Yes, the Trump bomb. And I'm like, you know, obviously it puts Republicans in a difficult position because he's doing something fairly unpopular.
The Daily
Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out.
And it has splintered their coalition. But it also reminds me how Trump's disruption, particularly on something like the economy and manufacturing, can put Democrats in a difficult position also. Because the voters I spoke to, they were a huge part of the traditional Democratic coalition.