Economics 101: Tariffs are a tax on everything we buy for our families and businesses.

According to a recent state Tariff Impact Analysis, Oregon businesses paid nearly $3 billion in tariffs to the federal government in just 2025. Roughly $670 per Oregonian, paid as higher consumer prices, lower paychecks, or from the state budget.

Exports dropped 17% in a single year. Because of a single year under Trump's tariffs. In 2025, we exported $5.8 billion less compared to the year before. Don’t believe me? Just ask Oregon’s world-class wine industry, now banned in parts of Canada and facing more retaliatory tariffs. 

That hit to our producers and exporters meant the state generated less revenue. $442 million from our two-year budget - gone. That’s another $100 per Oregonian we either have to cut in services or pay in taxes. That’s every need-based college grant Oregon awards for two whole years, plus another hundred million on top. Or one and a half times the Department of Forestry’s general fund budget, including wildfire response. Cough cough. 

Amanda Staehely is following the same Republican script: state corporate taxes and employee overtime protections are driving workers and businesses out of Oregon. Since it took effect in 2020, Oregon’s Corporate Activity Tax generates $1.5 billion/year – half of what we paid in tariffs last year – every dollar of which goes into Oregon public education by law.

She says the CAT hurts family-owned nurseries like hers. I believe her. Nobody likes paying taxes, even if it's 0.57% or less of a business's revenue. But Republicans like her have stood by and allowed the Trump administration to drain Oregon businesses of $3 billion while calling state taxes a “war on agriculture.”

Can Amanda Staehely represent the best interests of the people of this district, or even the nursery industry PAC which is bankrolling her campaign, while her party remains complicit in funneling Oregon money into billionaires’ bank accounts in Palm Beach or Dubai?  

This is typical of the GOP script. She claims she’ll support education, but not if it costs her business anything. She’ll address the affordability crisis but won’t acknowledge Trump’s tariffs are the cause. She’ll fight for farmers, but not against the trade war inflating the cost of everything from fence posts and fertilizer, to fuel and tractors, not to mention the retaliation tariffs our once-partner nations predictably slapped on our seeds, grains, and vegetables.

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