Why Is Thom Tillis Lying About Trump and Tariffs?

This is a serious question.

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World is attending this year’s Munich Security Conference. It’s already gotten off to a bang, what with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz taking aim at the Trump administration and saying/writing things like, “We have crossed the threshold into a gloomier era that is once again characterized by power flexing and great-power politics. The United States’ claim to global leadership is being challenged, perhaps even squandered. And the international order that was based on rights and rules, imperfect as it was even in its best days, no longer exists.” Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson had effectively barred members of his branch from attending the MSC as official U.S. representatives.

Today the hard-working staff and I attended a panel entitled “Tariff-fying Times? Managing the Weaponization of Trade.,” moderated by Foreign Policy editor Ravi Agrawal. If you like, you can watch the whole thing here:

The panel was an interesting mix of experts and enlightened amateurs. The WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was candid but upbeat. Finland’s president Alexander Stubb was smooth.

But the panelist that stood out for me was U.S. Senator Thom Tillis. He criticized the Trump administration’s tariff policies but refused to blame Trump himself. Instead he claimed that Trump’s staff was to blame.

Now this is a mantra Tillis has been using for some time now, and it rankles my hard-working staff a great deal. Why? All the available theory and evidence suggest that Trump’s preference for tariffs has been one of his core convictions. So why is Tillis using this dodge?

The Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Hughes suggests one reason: Tillis is still trying to play an inside game:

Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) last year insisted that it was best to handle differences with President Trump privately, saying that complaining publicly would accomplish little besides dividing Republicans.

Tillis has been a sometime critic of Trump policies, and in an interview in November said “shuttle diplomacy” was the best route to work with the voluble president. But in recent days, he has left little doubt that the era of private talks was over—and that his plans not to run for re-election had freed him to speak up more aggressively in a way other Republicans couldn’t.

But I’m not even sure that reason still holds. As Politico’s Meredith Lee Hill noted today, Tillis is a Republican who has taken public actions in recent weeks to break with Trump:

Trump’s decision to essentially send Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina into retirement has introduced a new wild card in the chamber’s dynamics.

Tillis announced he would not seek reelection after voting to oppose Trump’s signature “big, beautiful bill” and warning the Medicaid cuts in the party-line policy package would be a political death knell for the GOP. Now Tillis is frequently speaking out against Trump and is single-handedly blocking his Federal Reserve nominees until a Justice Department investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell is resolved.

Some members are also eyeing GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana as a freer agent after Trump went ahead and endorsed an opponent in the May 16 primary. Asked about Trump’s threats to lawmakers, Tillis suggested they could easily backfire.

“I still maintain a good relationship with him ... but I think we need to check our passions at the door,” he said this week.

At the Munich panel, the moderator — Foreign Policy’s Rawi Agrawal — said he was “gobsmacked” by Tillis’ answer. At which point Tillis tried to claim that since Trump relied on his staff, it was a valid critique. But no one was buying it. After the panel, Agrawal said he was still gobsmacked.

So why is Tillis lying? He’s not up for re-election anymore. He has not been afraid to take far more significant actions to cross the wrath of Trump. Why is he still clinging to this obvious falsehood?

Maybe, as Tillis suggests, it’s a way to give Trump a way out to change his mind. But I’m not buying it.

My hypothesis: just as speaking truth to power can be a habit-forming activity, so too can speaking sycophancy to power. And Tillis has been playing this double game for so long that even when he is nearing his political endgame, that impulse remains highly developed.

The other possibility, of course, is that Thom Tillis believes what he’s saying. In which case, he’s not lying to us — he’s lying to himself.