In Trump 2.0, ‘free trade’ Republicans are a dying breed

Just two fellow Republicans joined Sen. Rand Paul’s resolution to repeal the worldwide tariffs President Trump imposed last month in a Wednesday vote, while 49 opposed the move. It was a landmark moment in the GOP’s Trumpist evolution, showing how the party has bent to his will, sacrificing the free-market dogma once considered fundamental to its conservative identity.

“I think you’re seeing the Republican Party flip to where the Democrats used to be 30 or 40 years ago" on trade, said Sen. Bernie Moreno, a freshman Republican from Ohio and self-styled conservative populist who supports “fair trade." Following Trump’s lead, he said, “the Republicans are becoming much more interested in helping working-class Americans."

The conversation has shifted markedly from Trump’s first term, when the overwhelming majority of Republicans still openly espoused the free-market philosophy epitomized by then-Speaker Paul Ryan. Now, the GOP ranks in the House and Senate are populated with younger, Trumpist conservatives such as Sens. Moreno, Josh Hawley, Jim Banks and Eric Schmitt.

While many storied conservative organs, such as the National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, continue to argue against tariffs, others have changed their tune. The Heritage Foundation, once the bastion of Reaganism, now features viewpoints like “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love This Tariff-Like System."

Trump is drawing support from a rising faction of New Right economic voices that has spent the past decade working to reshape the GOP along Trumpist lines and away from laissez-faire. They say the party’s collective willingness to buckle up and go along with Trump’s trade war, whether out of ideological sympathy or political calculation, is evidence the populists are prevailing.

Some Republicans remain uncomfortable with the departure from Reaganite dogma. The tariff debate has sent markets gyrating and induced anxiety among the business community that has long been the party’s major constituency.

Too many GOP politicians are still in thrall to the libertarian fantasy of free trade, said Steve Bannon, the “War Room" podcast host, former White House adviser and chief propagandist for the “populist nationalist" ideology. But they realize that they have no choice but to do what their base wants and follow Trump. “The leadership here is coming from the people, not the political class that is owned by their donors," Bannon said.

New organizations have sprung up to challenge the old conservative consensus and provide intellectual firepower to the populist right. Chief among them is American Compass, a five-year-old think tank headed by Oren Cass, a onetime domestic-policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign who has emerged as perhaps the pre-eminent voice in favor of right-wing protectionism in policy circles. In a flurry of op-eds and media appearances, Cass has passionately argued for the fundamental virtue of tariffs and protectionism overall, though he takes issue with some aspects of their implementation.

Compass recently moved from a cramped office in a converted Capitol Hill yoga studio to a suite in a downtown townhouse and launched an online magazine. Its white papers and congressional briefings have helped to spread the gospel among members of Congress and their staffs, and numerous allies have made their way into the administration, from Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Steve Miran, chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Compass’s foundational idea is that the old GOP doctrine of tax cuts and small government—what some on the New Right refer to as “zombie Reaganism"—is out of date and that the state should play a role in ensuring families at all income levels can thrive. The organization has come under relentless attack from old-line conservative institutions such as Americans for Tax Reform and Americans for Prosperity for its heresies, but its influence is clearly ascendant.

“From a worker-focused perspective, free trade can be wonderful, but it has to be balanced. What you’re seeing on the right of center is the result of a decade of evolution," Cass said.

Many were shocked when Trump this week pooh-poohed the idea that his China tariffs would ruin Americans’ Christmas celebrations, saying children would be fine with two dolls instead of 30 even if they cost “a couple bucks more." Some observers noted that he seemed to echo the anticonsumerist rhetoric of the democratic-socialist Bernie Sanders, who said in a 2015 CNBC interview, “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers."

Most on the left believe Trump’s tariffs are hurting—not helping—workers and see political advantage in relentlessly opposing Trump’s unpopular policies. But there are exceptions: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in a recent speech in Washington, said she agreed with Trump that “we do need to make more stuff in America—more cars and chips, more steel and ships. We do need fair trade."

Both parties’ transformations are whiplash-inducing to longtime players in the trade space. “The shift in elected Republicans’ attitudes on tariffs has been one of the most remarkable I’ve seen on any issue," said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a nonprofit supported by the steelworkers’ union that lobbies for protectionist policies.

Meanwhile, he said, many Democrats have abandoned their roots in the labor movement out of blind opposition to Trump. “Most people like to think that Trump shifted Republicans’ views on trade, but I think he was being responsive to the voters who identified as Republicans but were not with Republicans on trade policy," Paul said.

To be sure, many in the GOP remain skeptical of Trump’s approach to the issue. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, is an open opponent of tariffs even as he has marshaled his ranks to support the president. Thune is a protégé of the former GOP leader Mitch McConnell, a tariff critic who said he would have voted for Paul’s resolution but missed Wednesday’s vote for health reasons. Elected Republicans often spin the issue by voicing the belief that Trump is using tariffs for leverage with the ultimate goal of freer trade overall, even though the president has repeatedly said that his endgame involves a permanent, revenue-generating, universal tariff regime.

Numerous polls show the tariffs to be the most unpopular aspect of Trump’s second-term agenda. His polling advantage on the economy has vanished as consumer confidence has nosedived in the wake of the markets’ chaos, which led Trump to put a pause on most of the non-China tariffs he declared on last month’s “liberation day."

But to many Republicans, Trump is leading the party in a welcome new direction. “We’re only 30 days into this program. We’re going to get through this," said Rep. Mike Kelly (R., Pa.), whose western Pennsylvania district is dotted with postindustrial ghost towns. “We’re going to get back the market share we ceded, we’re going to build things in America, we’re going to get back the jobs we lost. When this is done, we’ll look back and say, finally, we had a leader who stood up to the rest of the world."

Write to Molly Ball at molly.ball@wsj.com