Republicans got a series of warnings this week about President Donald Trump’s trade policies. But even the party’s biggest tariff skeptics doubt it will convince the White House to change course.

Democrats can hardly contain their glee.

Voters in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere flocked to Democratic candidates who hammered the president and his party for stubbornly high prices of everyday goods. It was an implicit — and sometimes explicit— rebuke of Trump’s use of tariffs, which are driving up the cost of coffee, cars, aluminum cans and other foreign imports Americans rely on. A day later, even Trump-appointed justices on the Supreme Court raised doubts about the president’s decision to raise levies, seemingly at will, on the country’s largest trading partners.

Put together, it was validation for the retailers, free-market economists and old-school, business-friendly Republicans who have been warning about the potential long-term economic damage of Trump’s tariff regime and GOP prospects in the midterms. But few see much hope in pressing the White House’s self-described Tariff Man to pull back now.

“Outside of a court order, he’s going to push the limits,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who was one of five GOP senators to vote against the 50 percent tariff Trump slapped on Brazil this summer over diplomatic disputes, which Tillis said outstripped presidential authority.

The Supreme Court is now weighing that question vis-a-vis Trump’s moves to hike duties substantially on countries around the world, and Wednesday’s arguments raise the prospects they will strike at least some of them down. In theory, it could give the president an excuse to rein in some of his most controversial tariffs — and help Republicans defend against Democrats’ attacks on affordability.

Along with the rest of the world, the U.S. economy has been struggling with inflation since the Covid-19 pandemic, a reality Republicans campaigned on relentlessly in 2022 and 2024. Now some conservatives fear voters are connecting those costs with tariffs — and their party.

“I think people see that something’s driving up costs and tariffs are at the front of it,” said a Republican senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly about Tuesday’s election results. “The president is so enamored with tariffs that it’s clearly a Trump-Republican thing, so it has a consequence.”

After their shellacking last year, Democrats say their election victories this week only energize plans to turn the table on Republicans in 2026 — making the election a referendum on Trump’s economic policies and how things like tariffs are making daily goods even more unaffordable.

Michigan Democrats have been hammering former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who’s running for the state’s open Senate seat, for months over tariffs that have rocked their famed auto industry. In New Hampshire, another state that borders Canada, they’re accusing Trump of hurting small businesses. In Kentucky, they’re warning about how his tariffs are strangling the state’s bourbon industry.

Nationally, Democrats are heralding Abigail Spanberger’s 14-point win Tuesday night in the Virginia gubernatorial race, in part because she gained support in deep-red central and western parts of the state where manufacturing and agricultural industries have been dented by Trump’s duties.

“Tariffs are fundamentally one of the biggest reasons why costs are so high and Americans know that,” said Sam Newton, the communications director for the Democratic Governors Association. “So in many ways, whether candidates are talking about tariffs or not, they’re raising prices in a way that sets the groundwork for Democrats to go on offense on the economy and on affordability.”

GOP strategists across battleground states, particularly in places like Michigan and Wisconsin that are home to manufacturing industries bearing the brunt of Trump’s tariffs, are warning that voters’ patience with his turbulent trade policies is wearing thin.

“It’s baked into the electorate that doing these tariffs will have some sort of short-term pain, but that we’ll realize some long-term gain,” said Jason Cabel Roe, a Michigan-based GOP strategist and former executive director for the state’s Republican Party who worked on presidential campaigns for Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio. “I don’t know if we’ll realize the benefits the administration anticipates from those tariffs by election time.”

The White House has maintained that Trump’s trade policy is ushering in a “golden age” for the U.S. and, even as the administration has acknowledged that there will be short term pain from the tariffs, Trump has spent the past few days dismissing criticism about high prices.

“The Trump Administration remains committed to the President’s trade and tariff agenda — an agenda that in mere months has resulted in unprecedented trade deals and trillions in investment commitments to make and hire in America,” said Kush Desai, a deputy press secretary for the White House. “Our America First policies are simultaneously delivering economic relief from Joe Biden’s inflation crisis for the American people while laying the groundwork for a long-term restoration of American Greatness.”

Most GOP lawmakers continue to give Trump a wide berth on tariffs, hesitant to publicly knock the president on his go-to policy.

“They would say there’s been a benefit, as well, to American production,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “It takes longer because they’re bringing in new contracts and trade negotiations and new trade agreements, so those come along a little later.”

But strategists see potential electoral risk in Tuesday’s voter backlash to rising costs and the possibility that the Supreme Court could kick control over tariffs back to Congress — and set Republicans up for more thorny votes that could cost them at the ballot box.

Trump acknowledged in a speech in Miami Wednesday that the economy played a big role in this year’s elections — suggesting Republicans aren’t spending enough time talking about his economic success. But he doesn’t appear to be willing to back off the tariffs.

“I think that they might be paying something, but when you take the overall impact the Americans are gaining tremendously,” Trump told reporters Wednesday. “They’re gaining through national security — look, I’m ending war because of these tariffs. Americans would have to fight in some of these wars. They are gaining in national security, they are gaining in economics, they’re gaining in so many different ways, and they are gaining self-respect for our own country.”

Trump has portrayed his ability to impose tariffs as “life or death” for the economy, but the Supreme Court seemed skeptical that he could override Congress to impose a duty on nearly every country in the world with few guardrails. In oral arguments on Wednesday, several conservative justices questioned whether Trump’s national security argument for imposing tariffs justified his decision to take a core power from the legislative branch.

But while a court ruling could make it more difficult to impose tariffs on a whim, Trump and top administration officials have pledged to find other legal routes to raise duties on foreign imports, even if it takes longer or is more cumbersome to enforce.

In an interview Thursday on Fox Business Network, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the Trump administration has many other authorities it can use to impose tariffs but declined to say which ones it would use if the president’s authority under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act are struck down.

Business groups and others hit by the tariffs are taking Trump officials at their word.

“Obviously the Supreme Court decision is very important, but we also are realists, and we understand that … President Trump has probably several backup plans here,” said Gary Shapiro, the CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, which represents businesses like Amazon, Best Buy and Verizon that rely on complex global supply chains impacted by the tariffs. “This may be a battlefield victory, but I’m not sure … we’ll win [the war].”

Stephen Moore, a former Trump economic adviser, said Thursday that Republicans quietly hoping the Supreme Court will offer an escape hatch on tariffs may be disappointed.

“One of the problems with the tariff strategy is it’s been a lot of turmoil — uncertainty and turmoil,” said Moore. “And if he loses the court case, I think that would only add to the turmoil in the short term. So I don’t think it’s going to be necessarily a victory for the economy.”

Megan Messerly and Caitlin Oprysko contributed to this report.