WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's new-found opposition to funding the Gateway Tunnel project is just the latest example of how he's championed policies that punish New Jersey, where he has long ties and spends his spring weekends and summer vacation.

The Trump-backed tax plan targeted New Jersey and other high-tax states by curbing the federal deduction for state and local taxes, and he backed Affordable Care Act repeal efforts that disproportionately cut funding from those states, which expanded Medicaid in order to expand coverage.

Meanwhile, New Jersey taxpayers send billions of dollars more to Washington than they get back in services, and his policies would only make that discrepancy worse.

"It seems very clear that a guiding principle of the Trump administration is to punish people who didn't support him," said Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University.

In the case of Gateway, lawmakers and officials from New Jersey and New York left last September's meeting at the White House optimistic that the president eventually would support the project, as the Obama administration did.

The spending bill now being written includes the $900 million for Gateway previously approved by the House, said Matt Hadro, a spokesman for Rep. Chris Smith, R-4th Dist.

Trump first lobbied House Republicans to kill the allocation, and then threatened to veto the entire spending bill, shutting down the government, if the Gateway money was left in.

"His actions just seemed to counter everything he has been a part of," said Rep. Donald Norcross, D-1st Dist., who attended the White House meeting. "He was a New York City guy. He has Atlantic City casinos. He knows how the Northeast works."

Nor was it lost that Trump supported spending billions of dollars on southern states hit hard by last summer's hurricanes, while opposing funding for Gateway, which would allow the existing train tunnels to be closed to repair the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

"New York and New Jersey didn't support him and he tries to crush the most important infrastructure improvement needed for both states," Hale said. "President Trump seems to take it as a personal affront that two of his three homes states didn't vote for him. He seems to love Florida."

Norcross said it appeared that Trump was using Gateway to get back at Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who has opposed all of the president's major initiatives, including his infrastructure plan that spends just $200 billion, much of it taken from other federal transportation accounts.

"What we're watching is somebody making government decisions based on a political payback," Norcross said.

Schumer declined to discuss whether he thought Trump's action was retaliation against him.

"I'm not going to get into the politics of it," he said.

Republican consultant Alex Conant, who worked on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's presidential campaign in 2016, said Trump's motives remain a mystery.

"It's hard to guess why President Trump opposes this project," Conant said. "It could literally be anything from a strategic move to pressure Schumer to because he saw a segment on Fox News."

It also could be a negotiating tool.

"I am hopeful it's a bargaining chip and part of a larger negotiation," Republican consultant Chris Russell said. "This is a critical project for New Jersey and the region, north Jersey in particular."

Indeed, Ben Dworkin, director of Rowan University's Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship, said the Trump is simply in deal-making mode.

"He's looking for additional leverage against Chuck Schumer, for whom the Gateway project is a priority," Dworkin said. "Assertively trying to kill the project doesn't mean it's dead. It means somebody has to give the president something in order to have him say yes."

Schumer said the Gateway project is key to a region of 50 million people that accounts for 25 percent of the nation's economy.

"Gateway is one of the very most important infrastructure programs in our country," Schumer said.

"If those two tunnels that are now under the Hudson River are no longer functional, there will be a recession in the entire country. We have bipartisan support for geting it done. From eveything I hear, it's all systems move ahead despite what the president had to say."

Trump may know his efforts are futile and simply seeks to put a marker down in support of his call for states, localities and the private sector to start picking up most of the tab for transportation projects.

While the states of New York and New Jersey have agreed to pay half the project's cost, they hope to borrow most of their share from a federal transportation loan program and then pay it back over 35 years.

"If the Congress has the votes, and it sounds like this is a very much bipartisan arrangement, there's not much he can do," said Krista Jenkins, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University and director of its PublicMind survey research group. "It basically can be seen as an act of political symbolism."

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.