Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned that the 2026 midterm elections could be brutal for Republicans if Donald Trump’s tariffs lead to a recession.
On his Verdict podcast Friday Cruz, a staunch Trump ally, warned that the president’s tariffs could push the US into “a recession, particularly a bad recession – 2026 in all likelihood politically would be a bloodbath”.
“You would face a Democrat House, and you might even face a Democrat Senate,” Cruz said.
“If we’re in the middle of a recession and people are hurting badly, they punish the party in power,” the Texas senator said.
If “every other country on earth” hits the US with retaliatory tariffs and Trump’s tariffs remain in place, “that is a terrible outcome” which “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.
On Wednesday, Trump announced ‘reciprocal’ baseline tariffs of 10% on most US trading partners and more targeted tariffs on many countries, including 34% on China, 20% on the European Union, 46% on Vietnam and 32% on Taiwan.
Stocks plummeted on Thursday and again on Friday after China announced 34% reciprocal tariffs on American goods.
Also this week, another Republican senator, Rand Paul (Ky.), warned of electoral disaster for Republicans in the midterms due to Trump’s tariffs.
“Tariffs have also led to political decimation,” Paul said. “When [former President William] McKinley most famously put tariffs on in 1890, they lost 50 percent of their seats in the national election. When [Smoot-Hawley] put on their tariff in the early 1930s, we lost the House and the Senate for 60 years. So they’re not only bad economically, they’re bad politically.”
Paul was one of four Republican senators who joined every senate Democrat to issue a rare bipartisan rebuke of Trump’s tariff policy by voting to block his tariffs on Canada. The other three Republicans were Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and former majority leader Mitch McConnell.
