Brutal supercut exposes Republicans who once blasted key Trump policy

04 April

Left: U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) on March 11, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard Right: U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on April 2, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

Nearly all Republicans are lining up in support of President Donald Trump's newly announced tariffs on essentially all imported goods, despite the sharp downturn in financial markets. But journalists at the Washington Post have discovered that some of those same Republicans cheerleading the president's new import taxes were huge critics of the approach just a few years ago.

On Thursday, JM Rieger, who is a video journalist for the Post, tweeted a supercut of several high-profile Republicans in Congress that showed them criticizing tariffs as economic policy in years past, followed immediately by them heaping praise on Trump in the wake of Wednesday's sweeping new trade duties. Post journalists included quotes from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and James Lankford (R-Ark.) along with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas).

"For years, Republicans in Congress warned against tariffs," Rieger tweeted. "Now, those same Republicans are downplaying massive tariff increases from President Donald Trump."

The clips of Cruz included one from a Republican presidential debate in 2016, in which the Texas senator said: "If we just impose a tariff, they'll put reciprocal tariffs, which will hurt ... 20% of the American jobs that depend on exports." Though earlier this week on Bloomberg Cruz said he just wanted to "focus on reciprocity." And Scalise spoke in 2015 about the need "to be able to open up more free trade agreements and export our products to foreign markets," before pivoting to justifying tariffs in a March CNBC interview by saying there were "a lot of countries that take advantage of the United States."

"So far, Americans have paid $12 billion in tariffs. It's not punishing the Chinese, it's punishing us," Sen. Lankford said in a 2019 Senate floor speech. However, he said in a late March CNN interview that Trump's approach to taxing imported goods was akin to "a kitchen remodel" where things may be "noisy" but "everybody has a long-term look of where we're headed."

This week's new import taxes have caused significant consternation in financial markets, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing more than 1,600 points lower than Wednesday. The Nasdaq Composite closed roughly six percentage points lower compared to yesterday, and the S&P 500 Index was down nearly five percentage points.

Watch the supercut below, or by clicking this link.

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