A Message from the Chair: Trump and Idaho Republican Politicians Are Driving Us Into Recession

To billionaires, recessions mean disappointing stock returns. To working families, they mean shuttered small businesses, layoffs, lost homes, and telling a graduate that college is out of reach. Recessions erase the American Dream for too many families.

Now, Trump and his billionaire backers are driving us into a deep recession while Idaho’s top Republicans aid and abet the damage.

The Trump regime’s reckless, on-and-off-again import taxes, or tariffs, are slamming our economy. The stock market is in a tailspin. Life savings are evaporating. The U.S. dollar and American companies, once the gold standard for global investors, are being dumped. What took generations to build has been torn apart in months.

The damage is just beginning. Chinese shipments are plummeting. Soon, retailers will lack inventory, consumer sales will collapse, and jobs will vanish. U.S. manufacturers won’t be able to get the needed supplies to produce goods at home.

Before Trump returned to office, in the last quarter of 2024, the U.S. economy grew 2.4% and was projected to keep growing. Now, the economy has shrunk by 0.3%. This is the sharpest, man-made economic disaster in modern history.

Our state will not be spared. Just ask Coree Carver, an Idaho mom who built Grove Fruit Growers to provide fruit Americans cannot grow domestically. Trump’s senseless 49 percent tariff on Cambodian goods is poised to wipe out her business overnight.

Our potato, dairy, and pork producers are bracing for lost markets. Manufacturers are losing vital suppliers. As a Boise State professor and supply chain expert reported, even wine producers warn of shortages and skyrocketing bottle costs. Many companies that usually recruit Idaho’s college graduates have frozen hiring as they prepare for the downturn.

Why is this happening? Because Trump’s billionaire-filled cabinet wants to replace income taxes they can easily afford with tariffs that working families must pay on everyday goods. It is a tax shift and a shell game. You pay more so billionaires can pay nothing.

And what are Idaho’s Republican leaders doing? Letting it happen.

Senators Mike Crapo and Jim Risch voted against bipartisan bills backed by every Democrat that would end the tariff war. Congressmen Mike Simpson and Russ Fulcher silently stand by. Governor Brad Little warned about the coming “economic shock,” but refuses to hold Trump accountable.

While Republican politicians bend the knee, Idaho Democrats are standing up. We are fighting to stop these attacks. And we’re fighting not just for the people who voted for us, but for every Idahoan working to provide for their families.

We believe that when you put in the work, you deserve a fair shot. We will not stop fighting to make that true.

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Lauren Necochea
Idaho Democratic Party Chair