Representative Mike Levin, a member of Congress since 2019 and representing California’s 49th district, expressed critical views on President Trump’s tariff strategies and their impact on economic and social programs through a series of tweets on April 3, 2025. Levin, born in California and educated at Stanford and Duke University, shared his insights on social media, touching upon several issues related to the administration’s policies.
On April 3, 2025, Levin criticized Trump’s tariffs as being detrimental to the economy, stating, “Trump’s across-the-board tariffs are economic sabotage. Higher prices, lower exports, and a path we’ve been down before. (Google Smoot-Hawley). His ‘reciprocal tariff’ math? Trade deficit/exports/2. That’s not economics. That’s stupidity. Congressional Republicans are complicit.”
Further elaborating on his disapproval, later on the same day, Levin highlighted a concerning approach taken by Trump’s team in their tariff calculations, tweeting, “You can’t make this up: Trump’s team may have used AI chatbot math to set tariffs—dividing trade deficits by exports and halving it. The economist who figured it out called it ‘extraordinary nonsense’ and he was exactly right!”
In another tweet on April 3, Levin addressed the Trump Administration’s cuts to food bank programs, sharing his firsthand experiences and fears about the negative impact on communities. He stated, “The Trump Admin is gutting programs that help food banks purchase healthy, local food. I visited Feeding San Diego today to hear how these cuts will harm families and make it harder for food banks like them to help people in need. We also discussed how tariffs will impact food.”
