The Finance 202: Trump unlikely to back off tariffs despite less friendly House

President Trump should think twice before concluding that midterm voters handed him a mandate to escalate his trade war.

Yes, a trio of moderate Senate Democrats lost their reelection bids in Trump-friendly states after arguing that the president’s tariffs were only importing economic pain. But a wider look at the results from Tuesday’s balloting suggests the administration’s trade offensive dragged down a number of House Republicans in the same region.

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein writes that in House races, Democrats who ran against Trump’s trade policy “fared much better and may have even helped swing control of the chamber to Democrats, underscoring the mixed political ramifications of one of the administration’s key economic policies.”