Top Republican warns of midterms ‘bloodbath’

Voters will punish the party in power if Donald Trump’s tariffs hurt the economy, Senator Ted Cruz has said

The Republican Party could face a “bloodbath” in next year’s midterm elections if the “liberation day” tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump backfire, Senator Ted Cruz has warned.

Earlier this week, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on the majority of US trading partners, causing the US stock market to suffer its worst crash since the COVID-19 pandemic. China has already reacted by imposing a tit-for-tat 34% levy on American goods, with other countries also promising retaliation.

Speaking on his Verdict podcast on X on Friday, the Republican junior US senator from Texas said that he did not share the belief of the Trump administration that the new tariffs would create “a booming economy” in the country.

Cruz expressed concern that the move by the White House could result in a global trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy.”

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If it continues over a long term and pushes America into “a recession, particularly a bad recession,” the midterms in “2026 in all likelihood, politically, would be a bloodbath” for the Republicans, he cautioned.

“You would face a Democrat House, and you might even face a Democrat Senate,” he said. Cruz explained that “if we are in the middle of a recession and people are hurting badly, they punish the party in power.”

“Look, I want this to succeed… but my definition of ‘succeed’ may be different than the White House’s,” the senator said, adding that he believes “American prosperity” should be achieved by “dramatically lowering” tariffs abroad, which would in turn reduce tariffs in the US.

On Friday, Trump defended his tariffs, writing on his Truth Social platform that his “policies will never change” and calling upon foreign investors to come to the US to get “richer than ever before.”

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Following the US president’s announcement of levies, JPMorgan raised its estimate of the possibility of of a global recession from 40% to 60%. “The effect of this tax hike is likely to be magnified – through retaliation, a slide in US business sentiment, and supply chain disruptions,” JPMorgan chief economist Bruce Kasman wrote in a note to clients, titled “There will be blood.”