BALANCING ACT

Republican Torches Trump as Vance Campaigns for Her

Sen. Susan Collins didn’t hold back in her criticism of the president’s Canada strategy.

Senator Susan Collins spent her morning railing against President Donald Trump’s Canadian tariffs while Vice President JD Vance was in Maine stumping for Republicans.

Collins didn’t have time to meet up with Vance while he was there, but she did have time to trash Trump’s most recent move on tariffs.

“I still think imposing new tariffs on Canada is a mistake,” she told reporters.

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She said she had recently met with the Canadian ambassador and urged him to “make sure that Canada dealt with one barrier that they do have, and that is to dairy products.”

Collins said pointedly that she “encouraged him to take care of that because I really want us to go back to the very friendly, economically beneficial relationship that we have with our Canadian neighbors.”

As a border state, Collins pointed out that a lot of Maine’s produce is processed in Canada.

“We produce a lot in Maine, our blueberries, our potatoes, our lobster, our lumber. That is processed across the border. If it comes back with a huge tariff on it, perhaps as much as 50 percent, that increases the cost of eating, building homes, and merchandising our best known products,” she said.

That is why, Collins said, she has voted repeatedly against Canadian tariffs.

Without mentioning Trump directly, Collins hit out at the way the issue had been handled.

“This has been really up and down. Yesterday I thought we had an agreement. This morning I read that it had collapsed. So who knows what tomorrow will bring, but I hope it will bring an agreement.”

Collins and the vice president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. White House spokesman Kush Desai defended Trump’s tariff plans, saying the president had “ascended to the White House on a clear promise” that “forgotten Americans...would be forgotten no longer.”

Desai said American workers had “borne the brunt” of “lopsided trade relations, including with Canada, which has demanded total access to the American market without reciprocity.”

Collins is in a knife-edge race to keep her seat against Democrat Troy Jackson, who replaced Graham Platner after the original candidate was accused of sexual assault.

Collins has been in the Senate for almost 30 years, and has won many tight races to keep her seat by playing up her willingness to cross the floor on issues.

At a campaign rally for Paul LePage, Vance said “whenever I’m in Maine, I’ve got to give Susan a little bit of c--p because, as you know, she is the most independent member of the United States Senate, and as the President of the United States Senate she sometimes makes my job a little bit harder.”

The most recent polls have Jackson ahead by between 2 and 4 points.

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