Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., held a press conference alongside a business owner and supporter of President Donald Trump who is speaking out against the president’s tariff agenda.
On Long Island on Thursday, Schumer stood with Tandy Jeckel, the owner of TandyWear, a women’s clothing shop in Suffolk County.
“No matter what your vantage, if you’re a business, if you are a consumer, if you are in the industry, the tariffs are one giant mess,” Schumer said.
Jeckel told Fox News Digital that she is the exemplar of a split-ticket voter – consistently supporting Trump, while also praising Schumer’s years of work on behalf of Long Islanders, including after Superstorm Sandy.
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Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks at a Suffolk County business hurt by tariffs. (Fox News)
When asked how she would grade Trump, she told Fox News Digital, “I would give him an 8 – it’s absolutely not a fail.”
“I would say an A,” she added, when asked for a letter grade. “But, with the tariffs, that’s my only issue… because I have a small business. So it’s not really political, it’s just something that – this has to be rectified for our small business, because how long can we go on with this for my small business.”
Tariffs, she told Fox News Digital, bring uncertainty to both businessowners and customers, adding that customers are “resistant to buy” these days “because of this shaky uncertainty.”
She declined to answer a handful of questions that were political in nature.
Jeckel told Fox News Digital that, in the long run, the Trump economy is “going to be great – once we get this situation with the tariffs” considered.
Meanwhile, Schumer also announced he would force a vote next week to end what he called Trump’s trade war, and called on the House of Representatives to act in-kind.
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Long Island, though a suburban area of a blue state, is remarkably red for its environs – with particularly the eastern half of the island solidly Republican for more than a decade.
Long Island lawmakers in Congress have real sway to pressure Republicans to act, Schumer suggested in a release prior to the event.
The event was billed as one where Schumer “st[ood] with Long Island Trump voters who love MAGA, but hate tariffs…”
Schumer claimed Nassau County, the central part of the island abutting Queens, could lose nearly 11,000 jobs, and Suffolk could see 24,000 disappear.
His new bill to force an end to the tariffs, he said, was co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Tim Kaine, D-Va., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Peter Welch, D-Vt.
“On Monday I was in restaurants in Syracuse and Albany,” he said of cities 300 miles to the northwest. “They’re having the same problem: paying more for their goods, less money in people’s pockets. So it’s all across the state.”
He also expressed hope the House will take up a Senate-passed resolution to nix tariffs directed specifically at Canada, an issue Welch brought up in recent comments to Fox News Digital as well.
When asked for a response, the White House said through a spokesman that Schumer wasn’t being forthright about his prior criticisms of unfair trade practices by other countries.
“[He] railed against America’s historic and persistent trade deficits with China for years until President Trump took historic action to actually do something about China’s unfair trade practices and cheating,” spokesman Kush Desai said.
“As always, Democrats are playing political games instead of working with the Trump administration to do what’s right,” he added.
