Trump grants tariff breaks to 'politically connected' companies, Senate Dems say

Source: NPR

February 4, 2026 6:00 AM ET


Two top-ranking Democrats are blasting the Trump administration for playing favorites with tariffs — by giving trade relief to the big companies whose CEOs are cozying up to the president.

In a letter to the White House made public Wednesday morning, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., criticized the administration for relaxing some tariffs "through an opaque process that appears to favor the politically connected" and that "has opened the door to corruption and economic harm."

Wyden is the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee; Van Hollen sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and is the top-ranking Democrat on its commerce subcommittee.

Now they're raising "significant concerns that the Trump Administration appears to have created a closed-door tariff exclusion process allowing relief largely for those with political connections," according to the letter addressed to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The tariff exemption process "has lacked transparency and procedural fairness for American stakeholders, especially small businesses and family farms," Wyden and Van Hollen added in the letter. An advance copy of the letter was seen by NPR.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/04/nx-s1-5698264/trump-wyden-van-hollen-tariffs-politically-connected-companies