GOP senators warn Trump that shaky economy could spell election disaster

Republican senators are getting louder in warning President Trump that economic headwinds caused by the administration’s tariff regime combined with the sharp reduction in global oil supplies could set the GOP up for a rude political awakening in November.

Soft jobs numbers and higher-than-desired inflation have been a persistent problem during Trump’s second term, but the double whammy of a full-scale military conflict with Iran and fresh uncertainty about Trump’s ability to reach trade deals after the Supreme Court struck down a key element of his tariff authority has created new economic risks, GOP lawmakers warn.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) warned this week that Republicans will face a “disastrous election” in November if oil prices don’t come down and if voters’ perception of the economy doesn’t improve.

Paul says that Republicans will be in a state of panic in the fall if oil prices are as high as they are now because of the supply crunch in the Middle East.

“The closer we get to the election, if oil prices are $100 a barrel in September or October, I think you’ll see mass fear and hysteria break out on the Republican side,” he predicted.

The prospect of a political disaster in November is beginning to dawn on senior members of the Trump administration and some of Paul’s GOP colleagues in Congress.  

“There’s a difficult realization that inflation doesn’t go away. You had four years of Biden when prices went up about 20 percent. They don’t reverse themselves, we’re adding them to them at a lower rate. Unless your salary went up 25 percent in the last five years, you’re worse off than you were five years ago,” Paul said.

“I think the president is starting to sense that,” he added. “The less talk we have of unconditional surrender and ‘We’re going to pick the next ayatollah,’ the more realism that’s injected into this, the better.”

“For the Republican Party and just for politics, the sooner the war ends, the better for us,” he said.

A Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment on internal discussions said GOP colleagues have been worried for months about voters’ negative views of the economy and fear the war could become a serious drag on it.

The GOP lawmaker said colleagues were “taken off-guard by the expansive nature of what’s happening with the conflict, the expansive nature of the war aims, and [we] are trying to figure out where this goes.”

The Republican senator pointed to weaker Republican voter turnout compared with Democratic turnout in last week’s Texas primary as the latest sign of political trouble for the GOP.

“Democrats are very, very motivated, turning out in big numbers. Republican voters are a lot less motivated and there’s a lot of work to be done,” the lawmaker said.

A new NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted in late February and early March by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies found that 62 percent of respondents disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation and the cost of living — up 7 percentage points from the 55 percent who expressed disapproval a year ago.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who faces a competitive reelection race, says voters in Maine aren’t happy about rising gas prices.

“They are not happy, obviously. Many rural Mainers have to go long distances to get to work. We’re a very rural state,” she said.  

Collins expressed some hope that economic fallout from the war might push Iran’s regime to step down its counterattacks on U.S. allies in the region.

“If this keeps up, it’s going to hurt the Iranians themselves because their own oil is [not] going to be able to get through the Strait of Hormuz,” she said.  

The military conflict with Iran has frozen oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, where ships would be vulnerable to retaliatory Iranian missile and drone strikes. About 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passes through the narrow strait.

The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil soared to $116 a barrel on Monday before dropping down to $90 a barrel on Wednesday. West Texas crude closed at $67 a barrel before the U.S. and Israel launched a massive operation of missile and bombing strikes against Iran on Feb. 28.

Republicans from rural states say that high fuel costs combined with depressed commodity prices caused by trade tensions with China and other major foreign markets are pinching farmers in their home states.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) says he’s getting calls from farmers who are losing money because of rising fuel prices.

“They’re losing a dollar on corn, two dollars on soybeans and that this is just one more [piece of] bad news,” Grassley.

He suggested that tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and allowing year-round sales of E15, a blend of gasoline and corn-derived ethanol, could help ease oil prices.

The Energy Department announced Wednesday afternoon that it would release 172 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) says he heard from the Kansas Farm Bureau this week and warned “the circumstance in ‘Ag Country’ is the most severe, serious financial circumstance that I can recall.”

“It’s the challenge of high input costs, including the cost of fuel and natural gas as a component of fertilizer, and commodity prices that are too low to cover the costs,” he said.

He said farmers are “anxious for the president to reach conclusions on trade agreements that lower the tariff barriers and nontariff barriers that agriculture has faced from many countries.”

“They’re very anxious for that to happen quickly,” Moran said.

On the global trade front, the Supreme Court’s recent decision that Trump lacked the authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to implement global tariffs has raised new uncertainty about whether Trump has leverage to finish negotiating more favorable trade deals with major foreign partners.

Moran said it’s hard to predict how the battles for control of the Senate and House will play out in the fall, but he warned that the strength of the economy will be a major factor in the election.

“It’s hard to predict where it might fall but … the economy generally and the cost of business and any difficulties in agriculture are not good signs for Republicans,” he said.

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