4 GOP senators join Democrats to attack Trump's tariffs on Canada
The Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday issued a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, when four GOP lawmakers joined every Democrat to cancel the national emergency that Trump declared to justify putting punishing 25% tariffs on Canadian imports.
In February, Trump announced he was putting a blanket 25% tariff on Canadian imports, saying the tariffs are a punishment for the country supposedly allowing fentanyl to cross the border into the United States. On March 6, Trump paused those tariffs. But Canada is now subjected to tariffs on cars, aluminum, and steel—which Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said will negatively impact its economy and has vowed to announce retaliatory tariffs.
Of course, fentanyl isn’t coming into the United States from Canada, one of our biggest trading partners and strongest allies.
It’s why Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell, and Rand Paul, both of Kentucky, voted for a resolution introduced by Democrats that terminates the bullshit national emergency and thus the justification for Trump's tariffs.
“As I have always warned, tariffs are bad policy, and trade wars with our partners hurt working people most,” McConnell said in a statement, continuing his trend of opposing Trump now that he’s no longer a GOP leader and isn't running for reelection. “Tariffs drive up the cost of goods and services. They are a tax on everyday working Americans. Preserving the long-term prosperity of American industry and workers requires working with our allies, not against them. With so much at stake globally, the last thing we need is to pick fights with the very friends with whom we should be working with to protect against China’s predatory and unfair trade practices.”
And Paul, who has also slammed Trump’s tariffs, said that this policy will hurt Republicans politically.
“When [then-President William] McKinley, most famously, put tariffs on in 1890, they lost 50% of their seats in the next election,” Paul said Wednesday, according to HuffPost. “When [Sen. Reed Smoot and Rep. Willis C. Hawley] put on their tariff in the early 1930s, we lost the House and the Senate for 60 years.”
Kentucky will be hit particularly hard from Trump’s tariffs, with countries Trump has targeted announcing they will retaliate by placing their own tariffs on Kentucky’s bourbon industry.
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Mark Warner, and Tim Kaine, both of Virginia, jointly filed the resolution and called Trump’s tariffs “deranged” and said they will “not stand idly by while President Trump launches a needless trade war with Canada that will raise costs for families, hurt American businesses, and damage our relationship with one of our closest trading partners and allies.”
“The president has justified the imposition of these tariffs on, in my view, a made-up emergency,” Kaine told The New York Times. “The fentanyl emergency is from Mexico and China. It’s not from Canada.”
Trump, for his part, attacked the GOP senators who voted for the resolution.
“Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul, also of Kentucky, will hopefully get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, insanely suggesting that putting a tariff on Canada will somehow stop the country’s supposed fentanyl smugglers. After all, smugglers wouldn’t go through legal means of trade, anyway, if they were bringing it into the U.S.
Of course, the Republican-controlled House is unlikely to take up the resolution. And even if House Speaker Mike Johnson did put it up for a vote, it's unclear if there would even be enough House Republican votes to pass it.
Trump said as much in his batshit crazy Truth Social post.
“The Senate Bill is just a ploy of the Dems to show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, in that it is not going anywhere because the House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it,” Trump said. “Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS?”
Apparently, Republicans are fine with Trump’s tariffs tanking the stock market and sending the world into a recession because their madman leader doesn’t understand economics.