Group That Says Tariffs Are Taxes Touts Tariff-Pushing JD Vance Taking Its No-Tax Pledge

In 2019, when then-President Donald Trump was considering higher tariffs on goods from Mexico, Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, held an unequivocal view: “Tariffs are taxes.”

But this year, as two advocates of higher tariffs are heading the GOP’s White House ticket, that view hasn’t stopped ATR from boosting Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, with the group saying he took its famous no-new-taxes pledge.

On Tuesday, the conservative group touted Vance’s signing of the pledge, while at the same time criticizing Vance’s Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, for hiking taxes in his state.

“While Tim Walz has raised taxes for Minnesotans by $10 billion dollars, Senator @JDvance has signed the #NoNewTaxes Pledge, vowing to protect Americans from income tax hikes,” read an ATR social media post, which was one of several trumpeting Vance’s pledge amid this week’s vice presidential debate.

ATR has long been seen as one of the most influential interest groups in Washington. Norquist, its founding chief, is considered a tax world giant, helping lead the Republican Party to prioritize lower taxes ahead of cutting the budget deficit. One of the biggest weapons in that fight has been the pledge.

This history made its touting of the Vance pledge curious. The pledge is usually couched in terms of allowing Americans to keep more of their earnings. Yet, two think tanks from opposite sides of the political spectrum — the Center for American Progress and the American Action Forum — have said the tariff ideas pushed by Trump and Vance would result in typical U.S. households paying about $3,900 more a year.

“I’m surprised that ATR would come out and advertise that, given how tariffs are a core part of the Trump-Vance economic agenda,” said Joe Hughes, a senior policy analyst with the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

“Americans for Tax Reform is not actually an organization that is devoted in any serious way to discussing tax policy reform,” he said. “Their mission is to support conservative candidates and really has very little to do with any sort of serious tax reform.”

ATR did not respond to a request for comment about the Vance pledge and tariffs.

The pledge does not specifically mention tariffs, but a version for federal candidates says signees promise to oppose “any and all” attempts to raise marginal tax rates and to oppose any “net reduction” in tax deductions and credits unless they are matched with further cuts in tax rates. The presidential version of the pledge is simpler, with signees promising to veto any tax increase.

It was unclear from Tuesday’s social media posts exactly which version of the pledge Vance took or when he did so. (ATR previously said amid the 2022 midterm elections that Vance, then an Ohio candidate for U.S. Senate, had taken the pledge.)

Norquist’s view on tariffs was clear in 2019. In an appearance on CNBC to talk about Trump’s tariff proposal against Mexico that year, Norquist said simply, “Tariffs are taxes.”

“They’re taxes on American consumers and American producers who use imported products. We need to get those tariffs down as quickly as we can,” he added.

Vance defended higher tariffs in his debate with Walz on Tuesday night. Trump has proposed a broad tariff of 10% or more on almost all incoming goods from foreign countries and a heftier tariff of at least 60% on Chinese goods specifically. A vast majority of economists agree that such tariff costs would be passed on to consumers, and many think they would hit the economy hard.

Norquist’s language from 2019 resembles that used by Vice President Kamala Harris’ current campaign for the Oval Office. The Democrat has tried to popularize the GOP tariff proposal as the “Trump tax,” and likened it to a sales tax. Trump has vehemently denied that the costs to importers of paying higher tariffs would be passed on to consumers as higher prices, even though that is the widely held view among economists.

Hughes, the policy analyst, agreed with the idea that a tariff is ultimately a tax.

“It is very similar to a sales tax in a lot of ways. It is a tax on consumption and it would generally be seen as a regressive tax because lower-income families tend to spend a larger amount of their income on consumption than higher-income families,” he said.

In this year’s matchup between Walz and Vance, ATR is “scared” of the candidate “who is cutting taxes on low-income families by raising them on multinational corporations,” Hughes said. “And the one they support and endorse is the one who wants to raise taxes on average families by $4,000 a year.”