Few things from President Donald Trump’s second term have been as polarizing as his use of tariffs in trade negotiations.
And despite the best efforts of Vice President J.D. Vance to keep that tariff train rolling, just five Republican defections in the Senate appear to have been enough to derail at least one major tariff target.
According to Fox News, those five lawmakers have thrown a wrench into the president’s trade strategy by joining Senate Democrats.
Democrats were looking to end Trump’s use of emergency powers to implement 50 percent tariffs on Brazil — and the following five Republican members of the Senate helped make that happen:
- Sen. Susan Collins, Maine
- Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska
- Sen. Mitch McConnell, Kentucky
- Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky
- Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina
That quintet backed the resolution led by notorious Trump critic and failed vice presidential candidate Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.
It should be interesting to see if those five names stick with their Democrat counterparts, as Kaine has already vowed to bring forth at least two more resolutions. One would seek to end Trump’s tariffs on Canada, and the other would seek to end his global tariffs in general.
That being said, as CNN notes, some of those defections shouldn’t be a surprise.
The outlet noted: “McConnell has long been critical of Trump’s trade policy, and said in a statement ahead of the vote, ‘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.’”
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Similarly, Rand Paul, a noted budget hawk, has been a vocal critic of the president’s economic policies.
It’s worth noting that Vance effectively pleaded with his Republican peers not to torpedo Trump’s use of tariffs.
Per Fox News, Vance told his fellow Republicans that Trump’s tariffs actually gave him incredible leverage when it came to making deals on an international stage.
“To vote against that is to strip that incredible leverage from the president of the United States,” Vance said. “I think it’s a huge mistake and I know most of the people in there agree with me.”
Trump explained the logic behind the Brazil tariffs in a July fact sheet.
“Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order implementing an additional 40% tariff on Brazil, bringing the total tariff amount to 50%, to deal with recent policies, practices, and actions by the Government of Brazil that constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” the opening declaration read.
The fact sheet then cited several examples for why Trump was taking this aggressive step. Those examples included the fact that “members of the Government of Brazil have taken unprecedented actions to tyrannically and arbitrarily coerce U.S. companies to censor political speech, deplatform users, turn over sensitive U.S. user data, or change their content moderation policies on pain of extraordinary fines, criminal prosecution, asset freezes, or complete exclusion from the Brazilian market.”
Additionally, the fact sheet said, “President Trump is defending American companies from extortion, protecting American persons from political persecution, safeguarding American free speech from censorship, and saving the American economy from being subject to the arbitrary edicts of a tyrannical foreign judge.”
Of note, despite passing, this resolution will not be addressed again until January of next year.
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