One of America’s most powerful women appears to have changed her views on tariffs as President Donald Trump engages the country in a policy she formerly supported.

Resurfaced clips of House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have shown that she, too, was once outraged about the state of American trade with China. Her recommendation in 1996 was the same as Trump’s today: reciprocal tariffs.

The 5-minute video, trimmed from CSPAN, has been posted and reposted countless times on X and Meta. One such posting came from Pelosi’s colleague, Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida).

“How far does China have to go?” Pelosi asks rhetorically. “How much more repression? How big a trade deficit and a loss of jobs for the American worker… before members of this House of Representatives will say, ‘I will not endorse the status quo?'”

The Californian condemned the proposal to give the communist country “Most Favored Nation” trading status. She then displayed a chart showing that the Chinese government tariffed many American goods at 35% at that time, while the American tariff on the same Chinese goods was only 2%. Pelosi’s chart also noted that far more Chinese jobs were supported by American trade than American jobs were supported by Chinese trade.

Although Pelosi’s comments were limited to China, figures including Trump would argue that the Chinese trade action she objected to in the 1990s is practiced by many nations today and justifies broad reciprocal tariffs from the United States.

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The Dallas Express previously reported that Trump called out “foreign cheating” in trade and fingered almost every trading partner. He later imposed tariffs on the EU (20%), Japan (24%), and China (34%). These tariffs were part of a nearly global tariff regime that the President imposed in the first days of April.

Pelosi condemned this Presidential action.

“Trump’s reckless tariffs are crashing the economy, raising prices on products and wiping out hard-earned savings,” Pelosi posted to X on April 9 with an “NP” signature indicating that she had written the message.

This was not the Speaker Emerita’s first condemnation of Trump’s tariff program.

“Donald Trump’s reckless tariffs will cause chaos in our economy, raise prices for consumers and hurt hardworking American families. This is not a strategy — it’s the largest tax hike on the American people in history,” Pelosi posted on Facebook on April 2.

In an April 4 press release on “Pelosi Statement on President Trump’s Senseless Tariffs,” Pelosi recalled, “In 1988, President Ronald Reagan said, ‘America’s most recent experiment with protectionism was a disaster for the working men and women of this country. When Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, we were told that it would protect America from foreign competition and save jobs in this country. The actual result was the Great Depression.’”

A clip of Reagan making a similar point in 1987 was posted by the Chinese Embassy on X.

 

Pelosi and the Chinese Embassy were correct: Reagan had been a critic of tariffs— and Trump had been a critic of Reagan’s trade policies.

“Well, I like Reagan,” Trump told Fox News Host Sean Hannity in late January 2017  after the talking head asked which President he most admired. “I didn’t like him on trade, but other than trade, I liked him very much, and he was OK on trade. But not great.”

 

The 45th and 47th President had been singing a similar tune for decades and has recently been highlighted by former clips of Trump criticizing America’s trade regime. Tariff talk reentered the national debate in late March when it became apparent that Trump would follow through on his campaign promise to place new tariffs against Chinese goods.