Action 13 - Oppose Jared Golden’s Universal Tariff Proposal

Background: On January 16, 2025, our Representative Jared Golden announced that he had submitted new legislation to impose a 10% tariff on all foreign goods and services imported into the United States and to increase those tariffs by 5% annually. In a 9/26/24 editorial in the Bangor Daily News Golden supported this tariff, saying it would protect American workers and bring manufacturing back to the US, by making imported goods more expensive relative to those produced locally.

This is a common political justification for the imposition of tariffs. However, experience shows it to be ill-founded. The World Bank Economic Review* found that across 151 countries over the period 1963–2014, “tariff increases are associated with persistent, significant declines in domestic output and productivity, as well as higher unemployment and inequality, and insignificant changes to the trade balance.“

Congressmen Golden’s blanket tariff proposal, like Donald Trump’s, is simply a bad idea, and a harmful tax on American consumers. Even Donald Trump’s economic advisors are reported to be counseling him to use tariffs selectively as one of several tools to implement a national industrial policy, much as President Biden has done successfully with, for instance, the Chips Act to revive computer chip manufacturing in the US.

Action: Call Congressmen Golden’s office to express your opposition to his blanket tariff legislation and encourage him to pursue a more thoughtful approach to returning industrial jobs to the US and Maine.

Contact:

Jared Golden’s DC office:

Email: https://golden.house.gov/address_authentication?form=/contact

Urgency: NOW. This is fresh news and needs immediate, thoughtful blowback.

Extra Credit: Read article on tariffs in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff