Senate Votes To Rein in Trump Tariffs Doomed To Die in House Under New Rules Adopted by Speaker Johnson

The Senate is set to pass a trio of resolutions this week aimed at killing President Trump’s tariffs on more than 100 foreign nations as concerns about inflation, poor jobs reports, and strife in the agriculture sector weigh on lawmakers. The only problem is that Speaker Mike Johnson changed House rules earlier this year to prevent his colleagues from calling up the measures in the lower chamber. Several GOP members of Congress — especially those from the Midwest and in competitive districts — have in recent months raised concerns about the tariffs. Libertarians like Senator Rand Paul and staunch free traders like Senator Mitch McConnell are also on board with striking down the import taxes, which represent the largest import tax hike since the Second World War. In an apparent effort to guard Mr. Trump’s much-beloved power to unilaterally levy those taxes, Mr. Johnson and his GOP colleagues have been extending an embargo on all challenges to tariffs from the Article I branch, which is charged with setting tax rates for Americans. In April — shortly after Mr. Trump imposed his “Liberation Day” tariffs which lawmakers are now challenging — House Republicans adopted a rule barring rank-and-file members from bringing forward resolutions aimed at eliminating Mr. Trump’s tariffs. Many critics believed the rule change was less about protecting the president’s trade authorities, and more about protecting vulnerable Republicans from having to go on the record in voting for or against Mr. Trump’s multi-trillion dollar tax hike. That rule change stated that no anti-tariff resolutions could be considered until September 30, 2025. Just before that was set to expire, the House passed an extension of that embargo on September 16, meaning lawmakers will not be able to bring up any such resolution until January at the earliest. It is possible, however, that the House could simply extend their rule change once again. When asked by the New York Sun on Wednesday if he expects the House to extend that moratorium on House resolution against tariffs, Mr. Johnson declined to comment, saying only that he is focused on ending the government shutdown.“We need to get back to regular session,” Mr. Johnson said. A handful of Republican senators have since broken with the president to pass anti-tariff resolutions in the Senate. Messrs. Paul and McConnell — whose native Kentucky is particularly harmed by foreigners halting purchases of bourbon — have consistently voted to end the import taxes. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, whose respective home states of Alaska and Maine have economies intimately tied to Canada, have also been voting to nix the import taxes.On Tuesday, the Senate voted to kill Mr. Trump’s 50 percent tariff on Brazil, which economists warn has contributed to significant spikes in the prices of beef, coffee, and critical metals. The four GOP senators who previously voted to end Mr. Trump’s taxes supported ending the Brazil tariffs. Senator Thom Tillis, who is retiring, became the fifth Republican to support repealing the tariffs on Tuesday. In a statement released Tuesday, Mr. McConnell, a former Republican Senate majority leader, ripped protectionists in his party for supporting the president’s trade barriers. The Brazil tariffs have especially incensed some lawmakers, given that Mr. Trump imposed them not for economic purposes, but rather to try to save a former right-wing Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted of trying to illegally overturn his election defeat in 2022. “Protectionists in Washington insist that the past several months have vindicated the policy of indiscriminate trade war against both close allies and strategic adversaries. But Kentuckians are especially well-equipped to sort the bluster from the truth,” Mr. McConnell wrote Tuesday. “Tariffs make both building and buying in America more expensive. The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule.”The Senate will next take up a resolution which would repeal Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canada, which were hiked just this week after the president saw an advertisement from the provincial government of Ontario criticizing his import taxes. That ad included a clip of President Reagan decrying protectionism. After that, senators will vote on a resolution to repeal Mr. Trump’s broad “Liberation Day” tariffs affecting more than 100 countries. Next week, the Supreme Court is due to hear oral arguments in a case challenging Mr. Trump’s expansive tariff authority, which has already been declared illegal by two federal courts — the U.S. Court of International Trade and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Senate Votes To Rein in Trump Tariffs Doomed To Die in House Under New Rules Adopted by Speaker Johnson

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