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Democratic lawmakers deflected questions on why the stock market has had success under President Donald Trump in spite of their dark predictions on the administration’s tariffs while speaking with Fox News Digital on Capitol Hill.
Some downplayed the market’s success, indicating that it has no bearing on the country’s true economic pulse.
Asked by Fox News Digital why the stock market is still doing well if Trump’s tariffs are hurting the economy, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., shot back, “The stock market is not the economy.”
She insisted that because of the tariffs, Americans “are feeling price crunch when they go to the grocery store, prices are high.”
“The tariffs are a cause of that. The tariffs or taxes on Americans,” she said. “And that’s why those prices are higher. And that is why I fought against it.”
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Progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., told Fox News Digital that she believes the stock market is only doing well “because the billionaires are continuing to do well.”
“Corporations got massive tax breaks, $7 billion in tax breaks in the big, bad betrayal bill,” said Jayapal. “That’s why the stock market’s doing well, because the stock is really, you know, a lot of those large companies feel like they’re doing just fine, they’re continuing to get huge tax breaks.”
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., said that “no matter what the stock market is saying, [Americans] are seeing the cost of groceries have not gone down. They are seeing that health care costs have become really exorbitant. They can’t afford it. They can’t afford the cost of goods.”
“That is what they expect us to respond to, is how it is affecting them and their everyday lives. And that’s what I am here and focused on doing,” she went on.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital that “everybody in America knows that the price of goods subject to the tariffs are higher.”
“The stock market matters to a lot of folks, but prices matter the most to people. And right now, people are hurting because of Trump’s economic policies, including the tariffs,” he said. “This is not what Democrats are saying. It’s just a fact that tariffs are costing consumers thousands of dollars.”
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has blamed the Biden administration for the persistent high prices at grocery stores rather than the tariffs.
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On Friday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X, urging Americans to “TRUST IN TRUMP,” saying that the president’s “pro-growth policies are a proven formula to Make America Affordable Again. They worked in his first term, and they are slowly but surely working now.”
“President Trump and his entire Administration, from the NEC to Treasury to USDA, are working hard every day to address the affordability issues created by Joe Biden, who unleashed the worst inflation crisis in modern American history — something the liberal media barely blamed the Democrats for over the past 4 years.”
Leavitt wrote that “the price of eggs, butter, ice cream, fresh fruit, cereal, fish, seafood, rice, pasta, and ham are all falling,” adding that “the best is yet to come.”
Back on Capitol Hill, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., echoed this sentiment, saying, “The point that [Democrats] are missing is that [Trump] is trying to get us better terms from all the countries that we export to, trying to get a level playing field, trying to grow our exports.”
“You have to separate the short term from what’s going to happen over time,” he explained. “They’re trying to make the argument in the short term because of some of the challenges of getting other countries to play fair.”
“You have to work through this process,” Hoeven went on. “The president did it in his first term, and we ended up with huge sales to China and other places, and that helped our ag markets and our other exports. And so, it’s the same thing again; he is working to make sure we get better trade terms for all of our manufacturers, processors, farmers, and everyone else. But it doesn’t happen in one day, it doesn’t happen overnight.”
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Trump’s tariffs are not all universally reviled by Democrats. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., told Fox News Digital, “I agree with some of the tariffs, especially with like China.”
“But I didn’t agree with going after Canada and our allies,” he went on. “In some circumstances, like it’s steel, it is appropriate. I don’t necessarily agree on some of the other ones.”
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Fetterman added that “now it seems like the Supreme Court might be voting against that now. So ultimately, their opinion counts a lot more than mine.”
Faced with the question of why the market continues to perform well despite the tariffs, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., answered, “One thing I’ve learned is not to try to predict or analyze the stock market.”