In Washington, Senator Dan Sullivan has offered reliable support for President Trump’s tariffs, even as they have roiled the economy and angered consumers. But back home in Alaska, as he campaigns for re-election, he has stayed largely silent on the issue.
His calculation is similar to those of Republicans across the country, as they navigate backing Mr. Trump while also appealing to voters who give the president poor grades on his stewardship of the economy.
But it stands in stark contrast to the frustration expressed by Senator Sullivan’s older brother, the chief executive officer of their family manufacturing business.
His brother, Frank Sullivan, has described the tariffs as a huge headache in earnings calls for the company, RPM International, which makes a number of well-known products including Rust-Oleum, Roto-Rooter and The Pink Stuff.
“From a high-level perspective, we seem to have a whole of government that doesn’t like stability, whether it’s tariffs or government shutdowns and now war,” said Mr. Sullivan, on a call with analysts and investors in April. “That volatility, I think, is frustrating a lot of folks.”
To navigate that uncertainty, the company has relocated manufacturing, restructured deals with importers and stockpiled some materials. And it has also raised prices.
The strategy — and the decision to pass along some costs to consumers — allowed the company to deliver its 52nd year of increased dividends to shareholders, a group that includes Senator Sullivan, who held as much as $5 million in company stock, according to his latest financial disclosure report.
The company’s success even amid tariff challenges offers a window into the economic crosscurrents shaping the 2026 midterm elections and the intense political pressure Mr. Trump’s tariffs are putting on Republican candidates, including Senator Sullivan. While the stock market is booming, returning double-digit gains to shareholders, many Americans are struggling to pay higher prices for groceries, gas and health care.
In Alaska, Democrats are trying to exploit anger around tariffs and rising prices, as they work to put in play a state that Mr. Trump won easily three times. Senator Sullivan is running against former Representative Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee, in a race that polls say is close. Leaders of the state Democratic Party regularly assail Senator Sullivan for his support of an economic policy that they’ve taken to calling “Dan Sullivan’s tariffs.” For his part, Mr. Sullivan has branded Ms. Peltola a “lower 48 liberal.”
Democrats believe the issue of tariffs has particular resonance in the state, which imports most of its consumer goods and food from out of state. Alaska has a close economic relationship with Canada, where Mr. Trump’s new 50 percent tariffs on Canadian exports led to a round of retaliatory tariffs.
The price increases from the tariffs have become increasingly difficult to dismiss, said Greg Wolf, the president of the Alaska International Business Center, a trade organization in the state.
“It’s certainly not cheaper to do business here or cheaper to be a consumer here than before the tariffs started” said Mr. Wolf. “Things are more expensive now than before. Everyone knows that.”
Senator Sullivan has repeatedly opposed measures aimed at terminating tariffs on Canada, Brazil, and dozens of other trading partners, breaking with Senator Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s senior Republican lawmaker, who has raised concerns about the “negative impacts in store for Alaskan families and businesses” from the policy.
Asked last month whether tariffs have benefited voters in his state, Senator Sullivan declined to address the policy, pivoting instead to his support for tax cuts and expanding domestic energy production.
“The issues of affordability in Alaska are always challenging,” he said in an interview at his primary night party in Anchorage. “Affordability is an issue, but it’s not going to be solved by having the Democrats undertake another war on Alaska energy.”
In statements, aides to Senator Sullivan have argued the duties are necessary leverage to compel international cooperation on trade and drug trafficking.
His campaign declined to comment on his personal finances or share his views on the latest round of tariffs on Canada. Representatives from RPM did not respond to requests for comment.
But for companies like RPM, which is based in Medina, Ohio, the tariff policy has emerged as a central fiscal challenge.
Senator Sullivan’s grandfather, Frank C. Sullivan, founded the company in 1947 and his father, Tom, took over the business in 1971. In 2002, his eldest brother, Frank, became president and chief executive officer. Another brother, Thomas C. Sullivan Jr., was elected vice president of corporate development in 2007.
Inside the quarterly earnings calls of the Sullivan family’s company, company executives openly wrestled with the impact of the tariffs, mentioning the policy more than 85 times, as they discussed a variety of strategies to manage what Frank Sullivan, the chief executive, called “this tariff craziness.”
Their discussion of the issue began in early January 2025, before Mr. Trump took office, when Mr. Sullivan described the company as “on high alert” for how tariffs could increase inflation — and its prices — on a call with investors, analysts and shareholders.
The impacts of tariffs were woven through earnings calls over the remainder of that year. In April, Mr. Sullivan accused domestic suppliers of steel and steel products of “predatory” behavior, saying they were “taking advantage of the tariff situation to prematurely raise their prices.”
In an October 2025 call, he estimated the total unmitigated impact of tariffs on the company at about $90 million to $95 million, about half of which had been offset through moving some of its offshore manufacturing to the U.S. and to countries with lower tariffs, and implementing new agreements with suppliers and raising prices.
When asked by an analyst on the call, Mr. Sullivan acknowledged that the company initially struggled to raise prices fast enough to keep pace with the new tariffs.
“It would have been nice to raise prices earlier,” he said. “The challenge with this tariff regime is it’s on again, off again.”
By the April 2026 call, Mr. Sullivan said the company had become “more sophisticated” in dealing with the regulatory environment, developing weekly reports on the impacts of tariffs by region, country and category and a better understanding of how high RPM could push prices before consumers stopped buying. When a premium spray paint hit $10 a can, buyers began defecting to cheaper brands — a lesson, Mr. Sullivan noted, in “consumer price elasticity.”
In response, the company pursued what Mr. Sullivan called “value engineering,” reformulating its mixtures and selling smaller package sizes to keep prices lower.
The strategy has been successful, said Mr. Sullivan, but the company was bracing for more uncertainty.
“We had, as you’ll recall, in fiscal ’26 a pretty volatile year, as did everybody,” Mr. Sullivan told analysts and shareholders on a company earnings call last month. “Our guess is it’s going to be another duke-it-out volatile year. ”
Still, despite the challenges presented by the tariffs, shareholders of RPM — including Senator Sullivan — have been rewarded for the company’s financial success.
RPM stock, which has produced a decades-long streak of record dividends, has been the senator’s biggest single financial holding since he entered the Senate in 2014. Over the past eight years, he has sold as much as $800,000 in company stock, financial disclosures show, and his holdings have grown from as much as $1 million in 2014 to as much as $5 million in 2025.
The trades were “part of an ongoing long-term portfolio diversification strategy that regularly includes similar transactions,” according to his filings, and are managed by an outside financial investor.
In July, RPM reported paying out nearly $350 million in cash dividends and stock buybacks, a 7.3 percent increase over the prior year.
Kellen Browning contributed reporting from Anchorage.
