The latest bipartisan effort to block President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs fell short this week. But Democrats and GOP opponents of new U.S. tariffs are vowing to force more votes on the administration’s trade policy and see multiple avenues for further action.
“We're going to pull out all the stops,” Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told Agri-Pulse Thursday. Wyden added that he has “no higher priority” than uprooting Trump’s tariffs, which he argued are taking “a huge toll on the wellbeing of our people.”
Wyden’s comments came just a day after a resolution that he led with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., challenging the economic emergency underpinning Trump’s reciprocal tariffs failed on the Senate floor.
The resolution fell in a 49-49 vote, with two tariff opponents, Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I, and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., missing the vote.
The initiative was the latest push to put Republicans on the record defending Trump’s tariffs. Last month Democrats forced a similar resolution to the Senate floor challenging the tariffs applied to Canada. That vote was ultimately successful, after McConnell, Paul and Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, joined Democrats in voting to overturn the tariffs.
In that vein, even though the latest initiative failed, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters that the vote was a “win-win” for Democrats.
“We knew that if we lost, every single Republican, including those up for election, was the single vote that kept tariffs – kept these onerous tariffs on the backs of the American people,” Schumer said during a press briefing on Thursday.
“They own it now. They’re stuck,” Schumer added.
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The vote in and of itself wouldn’t have overturned the tariffs. The House would have had to take up a similar resolution. House leadership, however, has blocked a vote on any such bill until at least the end of September.
The White House had also pledged to veto the bill, so a narrow Senate victory wouldn’t have cut it.
But tariff critics tell Agri-Pulse they see plenty more opportunities to force Republicans to keep defending Trump’s tariffs, including in upcoming votes on Trump’s “big beautiful” reconciliation bill.
“You're going to see proposals to undo the tariffs, and we'll see how they vote,” Schumer said.
Democrats will be able to offer amendments during the markup of any reconciliation bill in the Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees. Only policies that change spending or revenue can be included, but tariffs, with their revenue-raising potential, would qualify under existing rules.
“We're developing, all the time, more momentum,” Wyden argued. “What I think we do is we just keep at it and we're going to work through the procedures and the like to do it as quickly as possible.”
Paul said that lawmakers could also challenge additional economic emergency declarations issued by the president.
Senators have already challenged the economic emergencies underpinning the reciprocal tariffs announced on April 2 and the separate tariffs applied to Canada. They cannot introduce new resolutions to challenge those declarations for at least six months. But senators have not yet introduced a resolution to challenge the Mexico tariffs, which Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told Agri-Pulse Democrats may still do.
“It's possible,” said Kaine, who led the Senate effort to overturn the Canada tariffs.
In addition to pushing for more votes on the tariffs, Kaine also sees opportunities to push for votes on any future deals that the administration may cut to lower the reciprocal duties.
Kaine said there is a “legal dialogue” ongoing around whether the president would have to give Congress a vote on any new deal, or whether he will have to issue a new emergency order for each tariff adjustment that would be vulnerable to a new challenge in Congress.
“Anything done under IEEPA is subject to challenge and will be challenged,” Kaine said, referring to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that Trump used to impose the tariffs.
“The president imposed this global tariff regime under a single emergency order and now is apparently cutting deals with individual nations,” Kaine added. “I'm not sure the president can do that without that being a new order that would be subject to … congressional challenge.”
The Constitution gives Congress oversight over U.S. trade and tariff policy. Accordingly, Kaine argued that Congress should also get a vote on any new trade deals that would lower U.S. tariffs.
“I'm not sure he can do bilateral deals with no congressional imprimatur,” Kaine said. “So, we are looking at that as sort of a next set of steps, but we haven't made decisions yet.”
But how tariff opponents proceed may be less important than just keeping tariffs at the forefront of congressional conversations, according to Paul.
“The more debate, the better about tariffs,” Paul said.
“People ultimately have to ask a fundamental question, is trade good or bad?” he added. And Paul believes the majority of the public will eventually come down on the side of free trade.
“You ask the public, ‘Are you for tariffs to punish China?’ They're all for it,” he said. But ‘“Will you pay $300 or for your TV?’ They're all against it.”
Philip Brasher contributed to this report.
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