Susan Collins Discovers Tariffs Are Bad. Again. Right On Schedule.

There is a rhythm to Susan Collins, and you can set your watch by it. Trump does something reckless. Collins expresses concern. The concern arrives, precisely, at the moment it can do the least damage and the most good for her reelection. It is not statesmanship. It is choreography.

Watch the latest number. On Saturday, August 22, after trade talks collapsed and the White House slapped fresh 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, Collins put out a statement warning that the on-again/off-again trade talks lead to higher costs, risk, and uncertainty for Maine businesses, and that if the administration proceeds, the tariffs will increase costs for Maine families because most businesses will have no choice but to pass them on through higher prices.¹ She noted that Maine imports roughly $2 billion in non-petroleum products from Canada each year¹, then delivered the money line: I urge both sides to return to the negotiating table.¹

Urge. Not stop. Not vote against. Urge. She posted it to social media, said she wanted both sides to return to the negotiating table², and let the press call it courage. The Globe and Mail ran her tweet right next to Governor Janet Mills, who skipped the euphemisms and called it the President's latest escalation of his foolish trade war with Canada.³ That is the tell. One Maine politician named the arsonist. The other asked the fire to consider the impact.

Here is the context the choreography is built to obscure. The race is no longer a coronation. The RealClearPolling average has Jackson leading Collins by roughly 2.3 points^4,5, and the same Hart survey found 52 percent of Maine voters now disapprove of her job performance.⁴ For a senator who in 2020 ran with approval and disapproval essentially tied, that is not a rough patch. That is the floor giving way.

So the sudden bravery has a price tag, and the challenger keeps naming it. Jackson's camp fired back at Collins by pointing out that she votes with Trump 96 percent of the time⁴, which is the arithmetic that makes the tariff hand-wringing land like theater. You cannot rubber-stamp an agenda nearly all of the time and then bill yourself as the last honest broker when one plank of it starts hurting lobstermen who vote.

Give the woman this much: she is not entirely a wax figure. She said in August she would vote against Todd Blanche for attorney general, warning that the Department of Justice has become increasingly political and that Blanche has taken several actions that have further eroded the Department's independence.⁷ Real vote, real break. But she is the only Republican senator seeking reelection in a state President Trump lost⁷, and every one of these carefully timed defections reads less like conviction than actuarial planning.

The money still favors her, though the ground is shifting. Collins had banked a fortune while Jackson scrambled, yet after his nomination the challenger pulled $5.3 million through ActBlue in July, finishing third nationally among all Senate candidates despite becoming Maine's nominee only in the final week of the month.⁶ Meanwhile the polling shows the cracks in her coalition: nearly all MAGA Republicans back Collins, but her support falls nearly 20 points among Republicans who do not identify with MAGA.⁸

Thirty years in the Senate teaches you the choreography cold. Trump lights the match, Collins issues a statement, the cameras call it independence, the vote sails through anyway. Maine has watched the routine long enough to know the steps. The only question left is whether, in November, the voters finally decline the encore. MUCK YOU, Senator. Urge us again.