Affordability rises to top at US Senate campaign stop

HERBERT L. WHITE | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Archive CLT owner Cheryse Terry says the impact of tariffs on her business and the cost of health insurance has focused her attention on the U.S. Senate campaign.

Affordability is top of mind – and the bottom line – for Cheryse Terry.

Terry, owner of Archive CLT, a coffee shop in west Charlotte, worries about the impact tariffs has on her business. At home, the loss of health insurance subsidies will cause cost spikes that will result in less coverage for her family. Because of that, Terry is  interested in North Carolina’s U.S. Senate campaign. 

“Hopefully with the Senate race, we get a tariff break, the health care won’t increase like it’s expected to,” she said. “That’s been a challenge for me – the rise in cost, not being able to really offset that to the customer too much to scare them away. That’s the challenge that I face, so I’m praying that this Senate race will turn it around.”

That’s the message Terry delivered to former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat running for the seat incumbent Republican Thom Tillis is vacating in 2026. As the Republican-controlled Congress has ceded its constitutional authority to levy tariffs to President Donald Trump, consumers are paying more for goods produced outside the United States like coffee.

“You start off with these chaotic, indiscriminate tariffs that are being placed all across the world by this administration,” Cooper told supporters at Archive during a Dec. 5 campaign stop. “You know who’s paying for it? This small business, small business across North Carolina and this country, and their employees and the consumers. We were just talking across the street over here about the price of wedding dresses having to go up because of the tariffs. Your coffee is having to go up because of the tariffs.”

HERBERT L. WHITE | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper talks to supporters Dec. 5 at Archive CLT in Charlotte. Cooper, a former North Carolina governor, criticized President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans for economic uncertainty due to tariffs and rollbacks in health insurance subsidies.

Cooper, who served two four-year terms as attorney general in addition to eight years as governor, said the Senate race represents an opportunity for North Carolina voters to reset the federal government’s priorities. Affordability, which Trump successfully campaigned on in 2024, hasn’t improved in 2025 and federal taxes on consumer goods isn’t helping.

“There are too many people who are having too much month at the end of the money right now,” he said. “They're telling me that rent’s too high. The utility bills are too high. Health care costs are too high. Childcare is too high, and this administration promised them to fix these problems on day one. Not only have they not done it, but they made it worse. This big ugly bill, Big, Beautiful Bill, whatever you want to call it, ended up taking health care away from people. Ended up costing these very people more.”

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who accompanied Cooper, criticized Trump for the added tariff burden consumers bear as well as congressional Republicans for allowing him to concentrate power in the executive branch happen without legislative oversight.

“As we approach the holidays, Donald Trump and those who are enabling him in the Congress are literally the Grinch that stole Christmas,” he said. “We are seeing prices go up and not down. Here we are in this business selling coffee. We don’t grow coffee in the United States, and you don’t have the conditions for growing coffee. Businesses require a lot of different things. You’ve got to get cups, a whole range of things to make this work and these tariffs are a real strain and a burden on these businesses. And we ought to call tariffs what they are – they are a tax. They are a tax on everyday working people and so Donald Trump has made a choice. He’s decided that it’s Elon Musk who needs a tax cut. That is the billionaires in this country who need a tax cut, and he has literally raised taxes on everybody else, so you know who he’s looking out for.”

Terry is also concerned about Trump’s emphasis on cultural issues and coarsening rhetoric that has devolved into political and social polarization. Government, she said, should focus more on doing business on behalf of constituents.

“The level of pride, the level of security and safety and unity that we had grown to for the community, I see that being sabotaged,” she said. “Just the hate rhetoric that is in the air, and it’s been a nightmare, to be honest.” 

In addition to greeting Cooper at her shop, Terry found “it was actually cool” meeting Warnock, Georgia’s first Black senator and pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, a position once held by civil rights leader Martin Luther King. 

“My passion is archivist work, so knowing that he’s the first Black senator in Georgia, and he's also the preacher at historic Ebenezer, it was like him tying into politics and being able to have a voice for us,” she said. “That was icing on the cake.”

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