The GOP-controlled Senate offered a rare rebuke Tuesday of President Donald Trump’s economic agenda by voting to terminate the national emergency declaration used to impose a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports.
Just hours earlier, Vice President JD Vance urged Senate Republicans behind closed doors to back the White House and told the Washington Examiner that voting to undo the tariffs would be a “big mistake.”
Although largely symbolic because the House will not consider the measure, the outcome shows the extent to which some Republican senators are willing to buck Trump’s tariff policies amid broader GOP concerns about their economic impact.
In a 52-48 vote, all Democrats and five Republicans, Rand Paul (R-KY), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), supported ending the tariffs that were apparently imposed due to the country’s prosecution of Trump ally and former President Jair Bolsonaro. Only a simple majority was required for the privileged joint resolution led by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA).
The resolution is now all but dead, despite its passage. House Republicans rewrote chamber rules earlier this year to effectively block forced floor votes regarding Trump’s tariffs, a move Kaine said is evidence of a broader fear in the GOP to “cross” the president.
“Their change … demonstrates that they know it’s bad policy,” Kaine said. “[It] demonstrates that they know it’s really unpopular.”
Toppling Brazil’s tariffs was a novel endeavor not previously considered by the upper chamber and came despite hopes of a trade deal to reduce the duties being revived this week following a meeting between Trump and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The vote was the first in a series of unity tests to occur this week on Trump’s tariffs and import taxes, which have created heartburn for GOP lawmakers since the White House imposed them earlier this year. Two additional Senate votes are expected in the coming days to terminate the emergency declarations for tariffs against Canada and a 10% global baseline Trump set for U.S. trading partners. Both of those are also expected to pass.
“The point that I made to my Republican colleagues, recognizing there’s a diversity of opinions about it, is that the tariffs give us the ability to put American workers first,” Vance said as he left a Senate GOP lunch on Tuesday. “They force American industry to reinvest in the United States of America instead of a foreign country.”
Tillis signaled he would side with the White House on efforts to terminate the Canadian and global tariffs, criticizing them as “a messaging exercise.”
McConnell expressed his intent to continue voting in favor of ending the tariffs, as he’s done previously this year under Trump’s second term.
“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,” McConnell said in a statement. “And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions to end emergency tariff authorities.”
The trio of anti-tariff votes come as the Supreme Court prepares to weigh whether to invalidate a lower court’s decision to strike down the president’s global tariffs.
Trump recently halted trade talks with Canada and hiked its tariff rate by an additional 10%, on top of its 35% rate, over an anti-tariff ad from Ontario officials using soundbites from former President Ronald Reagan. However, most Canadian goods were already exempt under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
VANCE WARNS SENATE GOP NOT TO BUCK TRUMP WITH TARIFF VOTES: ‘BIG MISTAKE’
Kaine made the case Trump is misusing national emergency declarations under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs without congressional approval.
“Tariffs are attacks on American consumers. Tariffs are attacks on American businesses,” Kaine said in Senate floor remarks. “And they are attacks that are imposed by a single person: Donald J. Trump.”
