GOP Senator Susan Collins Torches Trump as Vance Campaigns for Her

C-Span/screenshot Senator Susan Collins spent her morning railing against President Donald Trump’s Canadian tariffs while Vice President JD Vance was in Maine stumping for Republicans.

Collins didn’t have time to meet up with Vance while he was there, but she did have time to trash Trump’s most recent move on tariffs.

“I still think imposing new tariffs on Canada is a mistake,” she told reporters.

She said she had recently met with the Canadian ambassador and urged him to “make sure that Canada dealt with one barrier that they do have, and that is to dairy products.” Collins said pointedly that she “encouraged him to take care of that because I really want us to go back to the very friendly, economically beneficial relationship that we have with our Canadian neighbors.” As a border state, Collins pointed out that a lot of Maine’s produce is processed in Canada.

“We produce a lot in Maine, our blueberries, our potatoes, our lobster, our lumber.

That is processed across the border.

If it comes back with a huge tariff on it, perhaps as much as 50 percent, that increases the cost of eating, building homes, and merchandising our best known products,” she said.

That is why, Collins said, she has voted repeatedly against Canadian tariffs.

Without mentioning Trump directly, Collins hit out at the way the issue had been handled.

“This has been really up and down.

Yesterday I thought we had an agreement.

This morning I read that it had collapsed.

So who knows what tomorrow will bring, but I hope it will bring an agreement.” Collins, the White House and the Vice President’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Collins is in a knife-edge race to keep her seat against Democrat Troy Jackson, who replaced Graham Planter after the original candidate was accused of sexual assault.