Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) on Monday accused President Donald Trump’s global tariffs of disrupting Nebraska’s economy. 

During an interview on CNN, the Republican lawmaker responded to a new federal report revealing Nebraska’s GDP had dropped by just over 6% in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same time period last year, tying with Iowa for the lowest in the nation. 

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“We’re now in a troubled time,” Bacon said. “And honestly, in Nebraska, the GDP here has decreased by 6% over the last year. And it’s all about trade. It’s all about getting corn and soybeans out the door.”

Bacon has been a vocal critic of the president’s expansive use of tariffs, including the “Liberation Day” tariffs Trump rolled out in April to force major trading partners to renegotiate trade agreements more favorable to the United States. 

“Nebraska is an export state, one of the biggest export states in the country, and tariff war is not good for us,” the Nebraska lawmaker said in an interview with NPR over the weekend. “And we’re seeing it. The economy in Nebraska constricted by 6%, [according to] the new data that came out this past month. Can you imagine a restriction in the economy by 6%? If that happened nationally, we’d be in a very bad shape. But that’s — a lot of this is because we’re an agricultural dependent state, so is Iowa, and they’re having the same numbers. And so what we’re seeing is basically a recession economy in Nebraska and Iowa right now.”

While clarifying that he is not against all tariffs, Bacon argued the president has exceeded his powers in enacting the policies, and authored legislation aimed at restricting Trump’s ability to enact tariffs. Bacon’s bill seeks to claw back Congress’s authority over tariffs from Trump, as he calls for the legislative branch to be the prime decider in enacting tariff policy. Congress holds “the power of the purse,” Bacon argued in April, meaning Trump’s efforts to “reset tariff policy” are “really in the realm of Congress.”

“I don’t really agree with two-thirds of his tariff policy,” Bacon said last Saturday. “Some of it, I think, we do need. China is a bad trade partner. The EU, though they don’t have tariffs, they had barriers, so there needed to be some discussions there, not necessarily a trade war. So I’m not against all tariffs, but I think what the president has done has not been very helpful.”

“The Constitution gives tariff authority to the Congress. We’ve given the president emergency powers, but I think it’s being abused in this case. And it’s creating a lot of damage. I saw it in Mexico, where they don’t feel like we’ve been treating them as a good-faith partner. And Canada, there’s so much anger towards Americans right now. We’re losing lots of business, lots of customers, lots of tourists,” he added. 

Other Nebraska Republicans, such as Sen. Pete Ricketts, disagree with Bacon’s view that tariffs are triggering economic decline, expressing optimism over new federal data showing ​​GDP expanded nationwide at a 3% annual rate in the second quarter, up from the first quarter of this year, when GDP contracted by 0.5%. During an interview with KETV last week, Ricketts also pointed to deals Trump has recently made with major trading partners, including China, the European Union, and Great Britain, which he said could tilt long-term economic power back to the U.S.  

“In DC, what we’re doing is trying to open up opportunities to sell more of our goods overseas,” Ricketts said. “The Biden administration was the first since Jimmy Carter to not do a trade deal. What we saw under Biden is four years of a trade deficit. That should never happen. We’re the breadbasket of the world — we should always have a trade surplus.”

Ricketts argued Nebraska’s decline could be offset in the coming years by Trump’s move to renegotiate agreements. 

“They’re taking their tariffs down so that’ll make us more price competitive to sell our goods into Europe,” he said. “Our job is to sell that. The USDA has to develop relationships and get purchasers in Europe to buy more of our stuff, but this is the type of trade deal that’ll help open up agricultural markets.”

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Still, Bacon has held fast to arguments that there are other solutions to making trade more palatable to the U.S. than engaging in global tariff wars that “do not help,” spelling out concerns about other economic indicators, such as jobs, that saw a downturn in federal reports last week. 

“I could see targeting tariffs towards one or two countries that are a problem, but going after 80 countries at once — I mean, I’m a military general. You want to fight a one-front war. You don’t want to have a two-front war or a three-front war, if you can help it. I feel like the president has invited a multi-front war on trade,” he said.