For four years, Democrats insisted that Joe Biden’s economy was thriving. Now they’re trying to convince Americans that Donald Trump has wrecked it. They once seized on rising egg prices as proof, but with those prices now plummeting, they’ve gone silent on that front. Instead, they’ve launched an all-out assault on Trump’s trade policies. The problem? There was a time when they championed tariffs to stop other nations from taking advantage of the United States.
And we have the receipts.
In a 1996 floor speech, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blasted the Clinton administration’s approach to granting China Most Favored Nation (MFN) status and criticized China’s trade practices as unfair to the United States.
“How far does China have to go, how much more repression, how big a trade deficit and loss of jobs for the American worker, and how much more dangerous proliferation has to exist before members of this House of Representatives will say, ‘I will not endorse the status quo’?” Pelosi asked her colleagues.
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She argued that China’s economic practices were inherently unfair and that America was on the losing end of the trade relationship: “In terms of tariffs, I think it's interesting to note that the average U.S. MFN tariff on Chinese goods coming into the United States is 2%, whereas the average Chinese MFN tariff on U.S. goods going into China is 35%,” she pointed out. “Is that reciprocal?”
Where have I heard the word reciprocal lately?
Pelosi’s argument mirrored those Trump made today, particularly regarding job losses and China’s exploitation of American industry. On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order imposing reciprocal tariffs to counter unfair foreign trade practices. Citing the persistent U.S. trade deficit as a national emergency, he invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to implement a baseline 10% tariff on all imports, with higher rates for countries running the largest trade imbalances.
The move is designed to reverse decades of harmful trade policies that have gutted American manufacturing and left key industries dependent on foreign adversaries. The plan allows for tariff adjustments based on trading partners’ responses while exempting critical goods like pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and energy products to protect national security.
“Not only do we not have market access, not only do they have prohibitive tariffs, not only are our exports not let in very specifically, but China benefits with at least, at least 10 million jobs from U.S.-China trade,” she said. “Fact is that U.S.-China trade is a job loser.”
Good Lord, she sounds like Trump there.
Pelosi warned that the United States was actively aiding China’s economic rise at the expense of American workers.
“If you want to sell your products into China, the Chinese insist that you open a factory there,” she explained. “They take, misappropriate your technology, open factories of their own, and then say to you, ‘Now we want to see your plan for export.’”
Pelosi even dismissed the argument that standing up to China would amount to isolating it, arguing that the United States was China’s biggest customer and had leverage: “Do you think for one minute that with 10 million jobs at least and 35 billion and be over $40 billion this year in a trade surplus… that the Chinese are going to walk away? Where are they going to take 35 to 40% of their exports? Who’s going to buy them?”
It's a good question, isn't it? The question is, why aren't Democrats asking the same questions today?
Incredible clip from 1996. Nancy Pelosi on tariffs and the trade deficit with China.
— MAZE (@mazemoore) April 3, 2025
"On this day, your member of Congress could have drawn the line to say to the President of the United States, do something about this US-China trade relationship that is a job loser for the… pic.twitter.com/DFlQ9wWSKh
It's worth noting here that this isn't the only issue where we see this phenomenon. Pelosi’s past stance on border security also once aligned with Trump’s immigration policies. In the late 2000s, she supported measures that strengthened border security and cracked down on illegal immigration. She even voted for legislation that included border fencing and increased enforcement resources. She’s not alone, either.
The fact is that Trump’s positions are actually largely bipartisan. The problem is that Democrats have gone so far off the deep end that they’ve abandoned the policies that they used to give lip service to the moment Donald Trump started following through on them.
