Democrats are sounding alarms. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, up for another term next year, warned the nation is “recklessly” hurtling into economic pain. U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock called the tariffs a “sales tax on ordinary people.”

Scenes across Georgia this week brought the debate home. As protesters outside U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s chaotic town hall blasted her support for tariffs, she blamed former President Joe Biden for setting the stage for Trump’s trade policies.

“Tariffs are not a massive tax on the American people,” Greene said. “The tax on the American people that you’ve been suffering with is the inflation that Biden and the Democrats put on the American people and their absolute reckless spending for the past four years.”

Credit: Jenni Girtman

Credit: Jenni Girtman

And Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is expected to run for governor on a Trump-aligned platform, said the president is delivering on his pledge to “put America first and rebalance trade and manufacturing.”

“These kinds of big changes don’t happen overnight. They take time. But it’s a fight worth having,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Thank God we have a President fighting for American workers and American manufacturers again.”

A spokesman for Chris Carr’s gubernatorial campaign did not address whether he supported Trump’s tariffs.

Instead, Neil Bitting said in a statement that the attorney general “will work with the administration and hard-working Georgians to ensure that the world’s markets are open to our products and that our domestic businesses are treated fairly at the same time.”

Gov. Brian Kemp, meanwhile, has navigated cautiously as he weighs a race for U.S. Senate or president. He initially focused on Georgia-specific economic issues, but more recently endorsed Trump’s decision to target China with steeper tariffs without commenting on the broader trade approach.

“The key to trade is making sure we have fair trade. There has been a lot of tactics and talk, and I don’t know exactly what the strategy is at the White House,” Kemp said, adding that Trump made a “good move to focus and square up on China.”

“The president wants to make a deal,” he said, “but he also wants it to be fair for the American people.”

Tariff confusion and political risk

The tariff structure is layered and unpredictable. A broad 10% tariff is tacked to imports from nearly every country. Others are narrowly targeted at specific nations or sectors. Some duties on Chinese goods have surged to 145%. China has retaliated with tariffs as 125% on U.S. products.

Trump’s strategy is anything but static. On April 9, he abruptly announced a 90-day pause on a sweeping set of what he called reciprocal tariffs affecting nearly 90 countries — one of several rollbacks or delays made with little notice.

It’s resulted in a wave of economic uncertainty. The Georgia Chamber released its third report in roughly a week on Wednesday — this time advising industries how to brace for price shocks and potential supply chain disruptions.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Chamber chief executive Chris Clark said some businesses are already feeling the pinch from tariff-driven price hikes. Most, he warned, will have no choice but to pass the added expenses on to consumers.

And Savannah’s booming ports are bracing for a slowdown as tariff threats and other business headwinds exact a toll on global shipping. Georgia imports more from China than from any other country, although the share of Chinese goods coming through the Savannah port is shrinking.

Few sectors are more vulnerable than agriculture, Georgia’s largest industry. State farmers produce far more than the local market demands, and much of that is shipped overseas. A significant share goes to China, the epicenter of the trade battle.

State Sen. Russ Goodman, a Republican who chairs Georgia’s Senate Agriculture Committee, is among the loudest GOP voices calling for even tougher tariffs, arguing that farmers need more leverage to compete with foreign markets.

“We as a nation need a readjustment to our economy, not only for national security but to also give the American worker a fighting chance,” said Goodman. “Nothing in this life truly worth doing is easy but having the courage to make the tough hard decisions can be transformative.”

‘Economic pain’

But the political risks are mounting. University of Georgia political scientist Audrey Haynes said no party is insulated from the effects of a downturn — no matter how loyal MAGA voters are to Trump.

“Whether a Georgia Republican is affected may rest on whether the public connects that pain to a Republican president and a Congress controlled by Republicans who basically allowed the president to do whatever he wants regardless of their right to assert their authority,” said Haynes.

And economic anxiety is already showing up in polling. A Morning Consult survey released this month found more than two-thirds of Georgia voters believe tariffs will push up prices on everyday goods. A majority say they are already cutting back on spending, avoiding big purchases or stocking up before price hikes hit.

Democrats see the economic strain reaching well beyond the federal level. State Sen. Jason Esteves, a likely candidate for governor, cast Trump’s trade agenda — and the GOP’s reaction — as a direct threat to Georgia’s economy.

“We feel Trump’s tariffs at the restaurants my wife and I own in Columbus and Macon,” said Esteves. “It affects Georgia consumers, it affects our employees and it affects my bottom line. In the face of this economic pain, the silence from Georgia Republican leadership is deafening.”

Staff writer Zach Hansen contributed to this report.

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC

Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC