Pa. Republicans gathered to celebrate Trump and DOGE — and hardly mentioned tariffs

HARRISBURG — While President Donald Trump’s tariffs sent shock waves through the stock market and fears of trade wars across the global economy, Republicans at the largest GOP gathering in Pennsylvania on Friday were largely unconcerned — and in celebration mode.

At the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, an annual gathering of Republican leaders in Harrisburg, lawmakers and grassroots party members praised Trump’s executive actions and his upheaval of the federal government through billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. They also vowed to continue to build on Trump’s momentum as the Democratic Party remains unpopular, and sharply criticized Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is up for reelection next year.

“I feel excited, because we, as a party, are here as winners,” said Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who received the most votes of any statewide candidate in Pennsylvania history in the November election and is considered a front-runner for the 2026 gubernatorial race.

The conference was the first major gathering for the state party since its sweeping November wins and showed the desire of Pennsylvania Republicans to support Trump’s vision of a greatly reduced federal government, even, they said, if it requires some short periods of discomfort from economic markets.

U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, in a prerecorded video interview with Washington Examiner columnist Salena Zito due to his Senate schedule, described the past months of rapid administrative change as matching the urgency he thinks Trump felt after surviving an assassination attempt in Butler last year. McCormick was on the stage with Trump at the campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show Grounds moments before a shooter started firing.

“Everything he’s doing … it’s exactly what he said he was going to do. So no single person in Pennsylvania or around the country should be surprised,“ McCormick said. ”And I do think there’s a sense of the spiritual side of this, that he thinks there’s something really big going on. I certainly feel that way.”

U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser of Luzerne County cracked a joke in defense of the administration’s aggressive executive actions.

“There’s an old saying you need to break a few eggs in order to make an omelet, so I think we’ve been seeing a few eggs being broken,” Meuser said. “And I have a theory that’s maybe why the price of eggs is so high.”

There were more forceful defenses of administration changes and DOGE as well.

“DOGE is a technology-driven lifeline to a country on the brink of fiscal collapse,” radio host Chris Stigall said to open the conference Friday. “And if DOGE succeeds, it could represent the greatest financial achievement since Alexander Hamilton’s founding vision. I believe it’s that important.”

Ned Ryun, a conservative activist and the founder of the candidate training organization American Majority, said he was not interested in Washington being “more efficient.”

“I want it shattered into a million pieces. It’s the only way we’re going to win,” he said. “Because the waste, fraud, and abuse is the poisonous fruit of a poisonous tree, and the poisonous tree is an administrative state.”

Ryun said he hopes DOGE, which has already cut 216,000 federal jobs, continues to slash the workforce.

“Remove them from the federal roll so that they never come back. That’s just the start. And then you shut down the Department of Education, and you blow up the building, and you build your garden of heroes over it,” he said.

These positive feelings toward DOGE and Musk stretched into the crowd, as several attendees said they support Musk’s work so far.

“[Musk] has been a pleasant surprise,” said Judy Zabel, a Pennsylvania resident since 2020 who lives outside Scranton.

The conference, which continued Saturday, also featured some of the GOP’s upset winners, like State Sen. Joe Picozzi, the first Republican to represent parts of Philadelphia in the state Senate in two decades, who sat on a panel about reaching young voters.

“You have to bring it right to the people,” Picozzi said. “You have to have an affirmative message of what the future’s gonna look like right here in your neighborhood, right here on your block.”

U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, who ousted longtime Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright in Northeast Pennsylvania, described Washington Republicans in remarks on Friday afternoon as largely “in lockstep.”

“I will say, for the most part, Republicans are unified,” he said. “I mean, they are in lockstep. We all know that we have an agenda, we have a mission that we need to accomplish.”

But U.S. Rep. Scott Perry of York County previewed a battle ahead in his remarks Saturday morning after the Senate passed its version of the House-passed budget resolution late Friday.

The Senate response includes trillions of dollars in permanent tax breaks and new money for national security but a fraction of the spending cuts present in the House bill that passed last month.

Perry said he would not support the Senate bill in its current version, with only $4 billion guaranteed in federal spending cuts compared with $1.5 trillion in the House version.

“No I’m not voting for that,” Perry said. “They’re going to try and pressure, with the help of the president, members of the House to agree to this as one big, beautiful bill.” But Perry said he sees it as a defining vote in terms of the country’s fiscal health.

“We are at a moment in the United States of America where you and I have one moment to save the country, and this is it.”

Meuser did not say whether he would support the Senate version, but mentioned it as part of a series of positive steps forward in Trump’s agenda.

Several attendees at the conference Friday largely shrugged off the tariffs rattling markets as businesses brace for the unknown.

“I’m listening to President Trump, and I have no reason to believe that he would not tell us the truth,” said Joe Phillips of Berks County, adding that Trump’s tariffs are responsive to how other countries treat American imports.

» READ MORE: Philly businesses prepare for a new era of global trade: ‘Everything remains up in the air’

“He’s saying, ‘No, you want to tariff us? We’re going to tariff you back,‘” Phillips said. “What the heck is wrong with that? I’m all for it.”

Speakers mostly avoided the topic, and when they did, they repeated Trump’s philosophy that a period of adjustment would lead to long-term gains.

“Over the last 25 years, free trade has been equivalent to unfair trade for the United States of America, and we’re correcting it, and we’re correcting it on Trump time,” Meuser said. “And the markets are having a tough time dealing with that, but he’s got his fingers on the pulse of this situation, and I do believe it’s going to work out.”

Stigall, the conservative radio host, said similarly that while he thinks Trump’s trade moves will result in “some market volatility, some short-term discomfort … the fact is, the country needs more jobs because AI is coming, and coming at us hard and fast.”