The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 27 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.With the midterms fast approaching, three things are happening all at once. Donald Trump is escalating his war in Iran, the ICE killings have started up, and Trump just unleashed a huge wave of new global tariffs. All this comes amid another unappreciated dynamic. Due to Trump, the GOP has squandered its traditional advantages on three fronts: national security, immigration, and the economy. And everything Trump is doing right now seems likely to only exacerbate that.To see how all this is playing on the ground, we’re talking to Democratic strategist Andrew Bates, who is working on a number of midterm races. Andrew, good to have you on.Andrew Bates: Thank you for having me, Greg.Sargent: Let’s start with the tariffs. This week, Trump unleashed a huge new wave of them—around 10 percent on goods from more than 80 countries, some higher than 10 percent. This includes 50 percent tariffs on Canadian exports. Andrew, the initial wave of tariffs are what caused Trump’s approval on the economy to start unraveling in the first place. They’re a big reason he’s at extraordinary lows on the economy right now. What are you hearing back from Democratic candidates? Are you hearing that they’re planning to campaign hard against the new round?Bates: Yes, they are. There’s a big change between 2024 and 2026 in the way that both parties are going to talk about tariffs. And it’s because in 2024, tariffs coded to a lot of people as, this is a way you shake up the economy. There was a lot of fatigue with high prices. Trump was promising that immediately, quote-unquote, he would lower costs, and tariffs were a critical way he said he would do this. Then people lived through them. And now, like you were talking about, because prices went up across the board, they’re extremely unpopular, and more tariffs are the opposite of what voters want, including a lot of Republican voters.So it’s something that Democrats, wherever they fall within the ideological spectrum of the party, have been unified in calling out as something that is going to hurt everyday people. It’s also powerful that the tariff revenue goes to fund the tax breaks for billionaires and monopolies, which are also very unpopular.Sargent: Yeah, and in fact that’s what tariffs are. They’re a tax. And Trump has openly and explicitly used them to offset shortfalls created by cutting taxes on the super rich. Now, I want to talk about your point about tariffs kind of coding as shaking up the economy. Trump was sort of seen as this figure who gets stuff done, who can kind of stride out onto the global stage and grab it by the collar and shake it all up. And I think those tariffs, when he was talking about them, may have also coded as, in some sense, pro-worker. He’s protecting American workers with the government, with decisive action. And one of the big civic success stories, I think, that we’ve seen is that the American people learned what tariffs actually are.Bates: It’s working people who are hurt the most. Manufacturing jobs are down as a consequence of the tariffs. And in 2024, Republicans were saying, this is how we bring manufacturing back. But now people have lived through the opposite. It’s also been very painful for people in rural areas. If you are a farmer, the chances are that not only do you have to pay more for your needs to produce crops—because the materials that are used to make farming equipment, like aluminum and steel, cost more, right, or the Iran war has caused gas prices and diesel prices to go up, and you need that as well—but at the same time, you’re in this sandwich where your export customers are often choosing not to buy American products because of retaliation for the tariffs. And that’s a huge hit to farming communities, because over a fifth of American crops are usually exported.Sargent: Republicans, in fact, are clearly worried about the new wave of tariffs. One ally of the White House told Politico that “if it’s not focused on affordability, it’s not helpful.” And he said the tariffs will be reflexively seen as a “bad thing” by voters, meaning there’s no way to really message about them. Another Republican told Politico this: “Any conversation about tariffs, unless it’s reducing them, is a bad conversation for Republicans.”Bates: Overwhelmingly, the swing voters who chose Republicans in 2024 did so because they were promised inflation would go down, and because they were promised this chaos and violence in the world would also be reduced. It’s not that these people were signing a contract that they were going to worship the MyPillow guy or anything like that. It’s that they had practical needs.