Government Funding (Executive Session)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Terminating the National Emergency Declared to Impose Duties on
Mr. President, I rise today in support of the resolution introduced by my colleague from Virginia, Senator Kaine, to overturn the emergency declaration for the northern border that is being used to impose tariffs on goods imported from Canada.
The Maine economy is integrated with Canada, our most important trading partner. From home heating oil, gasoline, jet fuel, and other refined petroleum products, to Maine's paper mills, forest products businesses, agricultural producers, and lobstermen, the tariffs on Canada would be detrimental to many Maine families and our local economies.
Of course I share the President's goal of stemming the tide of dangerous fentanyl that flows into the United States. I commend him for taking far stronger actions to halt this dangerous and deadly flow than did the previous administration. I do not, however, agree with his invoking the powers of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs on Canadian goods and products.
The fact is, the vast majority of fentanyl in America comes from the southern border. In fiscal year 2024, less than 1 percent of fentanyl seizures occurred at our northern border. And our Canadian neighbors are working collaboratively and cooperatively with our government to stop that trafficking.
One of the best examples of the intertwined relationship between Maine's economy and Canada can be seen at the Twin Rivers Paper mill in Madawaska, ME, way in the north on the Canadian border. Twin Rivers produces lightweight specialty paper for packaging materials, for our Nation's newspapers and our retailers' catalogs, for food and environmentally safe papers used in restaurants, and for a wide variety of other paper goods that are used all over the country.
The raw pulp for this paper mill in Maine is piped across the St. John River from Edmundston, New Brunswick, to Madawaska, ME. There literally is a pipeline through which the pulp travels between these two sister mills. A tariff placed on this pulp would jeopardize the financial well-being of this vital paper mill, which employs more than 500 people in rural northern Maine. There is not another big employer in that area that could possibly compensate for the loss of those 510 direct jobs, and that doesn't include the indirect jobs--the truckdrivers, the loggers, the restaurant owners who would be harmed by the closure or reduction in the operation of this vitally important mill. The tariff would not only devastate Twin Rivers but also harm hundreds of Maine families.
Another example of our integration with Canada is in energy. Ninety- five percent of the heating oil that is used by most Mainers to heat their homes comes from refineries in Canada.
Irving Oil, a Canadian-based company, has 150 gas stations in Maine and supplies two-thirds of the State's gas, diesel, and heating oil. This includes 100 percent of the jet fuel that is used by the Air National Guard base in Bangor. Maine consumers, Maine businesses, and the U.S. Department of Defense--our own Department of Defense--would bear the cost of that Canadian energy tariff.
Canadian tariffs would also harm many Maine farmers, lobstermen, and fishermen. According to the Maine Potato Board, 90 percent of the potash, which is the fertilizer used for growing potatoes, is imported from Canada. Fertilizer accounts for 11 percent of total input cost to grow our great Maine potatoes. Tariffs on imports like fertilizer will only hurt Maine potato growers.
I grew up in Aroostook County. I know these potato growers. I picked
Just recently, a farmer from Mars Hill, ME, told me that just the threat of tariffs is causing a price increase on seed and equipment. This farmer supplies potatoes to a Canadian company with facilities on both sides of the border. The different facilities have specialized equipment to process potatoes for different uses--hash browns in one plant, curly fries in another. A tariff on potatoes as they cross back and forth between Maine and Canada would cause terrible harm to this and other growers.
Other products are processed back and forth across the border as well. For example, many Maine blueberries are processed in Prince Edward Island.
Maine also sends between $200 million and $400 million worth of lobster to Canada each year for processing. There are 240 lobster processing plants in Canada but only 15 in the United States.
I share the President's goal of getting more of that manufacturing done in the State of Maine, done in the United States, but the fact is that if we impose these tariffs on Canadian processing, it is going to be our Maine lobstermen who will bear the cost; it is going to be consumers who bear the cost.
I would like to make mention of another industry that would be affected as well, and that is the aquaculture industry. In Washington County in far eastern Maine, Cooke Aquaculture is one of the largest employers, with more than 200 direct jobs throughout the State. While they have a processing plant in Machias, ME, the first step of their salmon processing occurs in Canada before reentering the United States for finishing.
At a time when the Maine aquaculture industry is growing, these tariffs on Canada would jeopardize current jobs and also block future ones.
Close relationships between and among families on both sides of the border are very common in the State of Maine. It is typical of communities, ranging from Calais in the east, Fort Kent in the north, and Jackman in the west. You see it all across the northern, eastern, and western parts of our State because our communities are so integrated.
It is not surprising to me that I had a conversation with members of the tourism industry in Maine just this morning who told me that they are seeing cancelations by Canadian tourists who had come for years to vacation in Maine. Old Orchard Beach, for example, is known for the number of Canadian tourists. We don't want to discourage these Canadian tourists, who are so vital to Maine's economy, from vacationing in Maine because they are so angry at what has happened.
Maine families benefit from more than $900 billion in goods and services that are exchanged between our two countries every year. It is crucial that we remain a dependent and vibrant global trading partner, particularly with Canada.
Now, I want to distinguish that I think there is a strong case to be made for tariffs on Mexico, on our adversary China, but I don't see the case for Canada.
There are areas where Canada does need to do better, and the dairy industry is one, and I hope we will see that resolved.
Let me conclude my remarks by reaffirming my support for ensuring that the Department of Homeland Security has every tool at its disposal to stem the flow of fentanyl into our Nation, but, unlike Mexico and China, Canada is not complicit in this crisis.
And we should continue working with our Canadian allies to secure the northern border, not unfairly penalize them. Our consumers, our manufacturers, our lobstermen, our blueberry growers, our potato farmers will pay the price.
Mr. President, the price hikes that will happen for Maine families every time they go to the grocery store, they fill their gas tank, they fill their heating oil tank, if these tariffs go into effect, will be so harmful. And as price hikes always do, they will hurt those the most who can afford them the least. Therefore, I will support this resolution, and I urge my colleagues to do so likewise.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. President, I rise today, following my colleague from Maine, to talk about S.J. Res. 37, which we believe will come up for a vote later this afternoon, possibly somewhere between 6 and 7 o'clock.
I am proud to have introduced this resolution a few weeks back, together with a group of bipartisan Senators, many of whom will take the floor this afternoon to speak about it.
Let me just first talk about the fact that this resolution is a little bit unusual in terms of Senate procedure. There are not many things that a single Senator can file and then be guaranteed a floor vote. In fact, there are only three or four such procedures. This resolution is filed pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which was the act used by Trump to declare the Canadian emergency that is the subject of my resolution.
The IEEPA statute is an old statute. It has been around for quite a while. I will just state, at the outset, that IEEPA, the act that the President has used to declare an emergency and impose tariffs, is an act that was designed to be used against adversaries. Congress wanted to give the President tools to deal with adversaries--nations that were enemies, cartels, rogue states, and dictators.
IEEPA was not designed to be used against allies. IEEPA says nothing about tariffs. It does not say that the President's actions against adversaries should include tariffs.
The administration's use of this Emergency Powers Act to go against an ally is pretty unusual. It is not unprecedented. The President did it in the first term when he imposed IEEPA tariffs against both Canada and the EU. But it is important to know that this is generally a statute that was designed to counter adversaries.
I stand here strongly in the belief that Canada is not an adversary; they are an ally. Canada is not the 51st State; they are a sovereign nation. And Canada is not an emergency for the United States.
Are there differences of opinion between the United States and Canada? Sure, there are. It just so happens, in the trade space, we have a state-of-the-art trade deal negotiated by President Trump and his team, the USMCA, which was adopted by nearly a 90-to-10 vote in this body, that gives us the ability, when we have differences with this friend and ally, Canada, to work them out.
And it is unfortunate, in my view, that instead of going through the USMCA, we are using an act designed to counter adversaries to impose these tariffs.
I want to talk about tariffs. I want to talk about the President's rationale for imposing the tariffs, and then I want to talk about the importance of this resolution and the many stakeholders outside this body who are supporting S.J. Res. 37.
First, on tariffs, President Trump's aides have basically admitted that this is a sales tax--a new sales tax. The tariff revenue will hit everyday people by making the cost of their goods go up.
This is a CNN headline from a couple of days ago: ``Trump aide says tariffs will raise $6 trillion''--that is a reference to Peter Navarro--``which would be the largest tax hike in US history.''
To be fair, this is the total tariff effect, not just the Canada effect--Canada, China, Mexico, and potentially other nations. But what we are likely to see today with the tariff announcement is that it will be the largest tax hike in U.S. history.
Many have been writing about the challenges of tariffs and this tax hike.
From CNBC:
This was an economy that was extremely strong just 2 months ago, on President Trump's Inauguration Day. It was a very, very strong economy, not a perfect economy. But since that time, we have seen volatility in the stock market. We have seen growing inflation. We have seen reducing consumer confidence. We have seen some suggestions of slowing economic growth--even negative economic growth from some. And that is due, in large part, to the prospect of this national sales tax--tariffs to the degree of $6 trillion--but also somewhat to the chaos about whether and when and how they will be implemented.
Other economists have also written. A recent article in the Washington
Tariff shenanigans are shaking up the American economy, creating huge anxiety and hurting consumers and businesses.
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal called the Trump tariff effort ``The Dumbest Trade War in History.''
The Wall Street Journal's point was a point I made earlier. Why use IEEPA, a statute designed to go after enemies, when we have a trade deal that President Trump negotiated with Canada and Mexico? None of this is supposed to happen under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated and signed in his first term.
Again, I give the President huge credit for this. I believe the USMCA vote in the first term got 89 votes in this Chamber. That is hard on anything, much less a trade deal--what an accomplishment.
But the USMCA created dispute resolution mechanisms that would make imposition of tariffs unnecessary.
I have given you challenges in the global economy and in the American economy that are happening because of the trade war. Let me now get specific on Virginia. I heard my colleague from Maine talk about who is affected in Maine.
In Virginia, I have been traveling around the State, talking to Virginians, and they are very, very worried about these Canadian tariffs. They are not worried in the abstract. They saw them in 2017, 2018, 2019. They know what happens with tariffs.
It is an unusual group of businesses in that it is big, small, medium size--it is everybody.
I have a bakery in Northern Virginia, Mom's Apple Pie. They have three locations. The owner, April--I see some nods. There are people who are Mom's Apple Pie fans. It is a great small business bakery. Their operations are in Leesburg, Occoquan, and Purcellville.
I was meeting recently with the owner, and she said: You have to do something about these Canadian tariffs.
I said: April, you have three small bakeries. Tell me how the Canadian tariffs hit you.
She said: Pie tins. All our aluminum pie tins come from Canada.
If you raise the price of a pie tin by 25 percent, the price of a pie goes up a bit. Nobody has to buy apple pies. When the price goes up, a whole lot of people will decide they are not going to buy apple pies. This is a classic small business that is affected by Canadian tariffs.
Let's go to the largest businesses.
We are experts at ship and sub building in Virginia. We manufacture the most sophisticated items that are made on the planet Earth--nuclear carriers and nuclear subs. Thirty-five percent of the steel that goes into ships and subs made for our Navy, for our military, comes from Canada. Sixty-five percent of the aluminum steel comes from the United States, but 35 percent comes from Canada.
I serve with the Presiding Officer on the Armed Services Committee. We already are having a hard time producing ships and subs on time, on budget. Take aluminum and steel and ratchet them up by 20 percent, and it is going to get even harder to defend the Nation and produce the ships and subs that we need.
Like Senator Collins talking about her ag sector, ag and forestry is still the biggest industry in Virginia. People think of it as high- tech. No, ag and forestry is still No. 1, and it is my farmers and foresters that are most concerned about the Canadian tariffs because they saw what happened last time.
The first thing that happens, you put a tariff on Canadian exports. Potash, the ingredient in agriculture fertilizer--80 percent of potash comes as an import into the United States. So that immediately goes up by 25 percent, according to what the President has said he is going to do. That hurts farmers very, very badly.
Second, there has never been a one-sided trade war in the history of the world. When one party puts a tariff on, the other side retaliates. In the first Trump administration, the retaliation was heavily against the ag sector.
My soybean farmers that were exporting soybeans couldn't export to markets that they were previously able to. My apple farmers who export apples to Canada couldn't do it to the same degree, and their exports dropped and their revenues dropped. And this is already a low-margin business.
My distillers and wineries and breweries--many of which find an important part of their revenue might be 10 percent or 15 percent or 25 percent in export markets to the EU, to Canada, to Mexico--suddenly find that retaliatory tariffs price their products out of business.
I was with Dave Cuttino, the founder of Reservoir Distillery in Richmond, yesterday. He talked about the fact that, even before these tariffs have gone into effect, because President Trump announced them but then delayed them, there is an anger in the Canadian consumer: We don't want to buy American products if you are going to treat us this way.
He has been told by his distributors in the Alberta Province that there will be no American product put on any more shelves because: We are so furious at the way we are being treated in this.
Big Businesses, small businesses. Volvo Trucks is one of the largest manufacturers in Appalachian Virginia--in Dublin, VA. They manufacture all of the Volvo over-the-road trucks that you see anywhere in North America. They export significantly--significantly--to Canada and Mexico. They also import source materials from Canada and Mexico. The tariffs will increase the cost of their inputs, driving the price of their trucks up, making those trucks less competitive.
We have a lot of businesses in Virginia that have operations on both sides of the border. BWXT in Lynchburg is the Nation's premier producer of nuclear reactors for ships and subs, as well as nuclear reactors for other possibilities. They have operations in Canada, and they shift product back and forth across the line in ways where the tariffs will make it more expensive.
So the Virginia effect--and let's be clear, there is another one the Senator talked about: tourism. We rely on tourism in Virginia. We are a Top Ten tourism State, and we have a lot of Canadian tourists. In fact, Canadians are among the most frequent visitors to Virginia Beach. To our pristine, wonderful beachfront community, Canada tourism is strong. Canadian tourism to the United States--air reservations from Canadians coming to the United States are down by 75 percent because of the feeling that they are not being treated fairly. They are looking at the United States, an ally, and they are saying: Why us?
So there is an effect on the economy--the big picture--on the stock market, inflation, at the kitchen table, the cost of groceries. Building supplies come from Canada--a lot of lumber. Housing is already too expensive. A tariff on lumber coming in from Canada is just going to drive up the cost of any home renovation project or new home construction. There are tariffs on Canadian automobiles. A lot of the U.S.-plated automobiles are made--or at least products are significantly made--in Canada. Those prices will go up. So, from the kitchen table of a family to our Nation's larger shipbuilders, these tariff shenanigans pose a huge economic risk.
I go back to a point that was raised in the Wall Street Journal article: Why not use the USMCA? Why not use the USMCA? President Trump negotiated it. It was a success. It was something that succeeded in a bipartisan way. There have been discussions about whether, after 5 or 6 years, the USMCA should be renegotiated. I think that is fine. We renegotiated NAFTA. President Trump made it better. If 5 or 6 years of operating under USMCA has taught us ways it can be made better, that is fine, too, but when you establish a treaty with an ally that includes
So that does raise the question, If the USMCA is available and if there are differences of opinion on trade, why is the President imposing tariffs and using an emergency declaration rather than using the USMCA? I want to get to that next.
The President has said there is one reason he is doing this. There is one reason for the emergency, for labeling Canada through this use of emergency power as an ``adversary,'' and the reason is fentanyl-- fentanyl. No one in this Chamber and no one here now or any of the 100 Senators would dispute that fentanyl is a massive problem and, indeed, an emergency. The opioid overdose deaths in my State and in Alabama--in all States--heartbreaking; the stories of families who lost their loved ones--heartbreaking. I was in Roanoke earlier this morning with an ESPN reporter who was a gymnast and now works at ESPN, Lauren Keller. Lauren is from Roanoke, VA. She was in her freshman year at Rutgers when she got the call that her mother, at age 45, had died. Her dad called her. She went to the airport. She flew home. By the time she landed in Roanoke, her dad had died as well. Both overdosed on OxyContin, an opioid-based pain medication.
So is fentanyl a problem? Yes. Is it an emergency? Yes. Is substance use disorder generally an emergency? Yes, of course it is. That is why we passed the HALT Fentanyl Act just about 2 weeks ago in this Chamber--a big bipartisan vote. That is why we are putting budgetary resources into interdiction technology. That is why Senator Ernst and I got a provision in the Defense bill 2 years ago to require more cooperation between the U.S. and Mexican military on fentanyl interdiction.
It is an emergency, but fentanyl is not a Canadian emergency. Calling it a Canadian emergency and putting the same tariffs on Canadian products as we put on Mexican and Canadian products is an invented emergency, not a real emergency. And guess what. The Trump administration agrees with me on this. Even though the President has declared a Canadian fentanyl emergency, there is a Biblical statement, I think, about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
One of the President's key intelligence advisers Tulsi Gabbard appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, and she presented to the Intel Committee an annual assessment required of her office. It is called the ``Annual Threat Assessment.'' It looks at every threat that the United States is under globally. Who is threatening us militarily? Who is threatening us with fentanyl? Who is threatening us with cyber attacks? Who is threatening us with misinformation?
As she presented the report to the committee, one of my colleagues, Senator Heinrich of New Mexico, looked through the report and noticed that Canada wasn't in the report. Canada was not even mentioned as a threat in the Trump administration's first ``Annual Threat Assessment.'' There was even a section in the report specifically about fentanyl, and Canada wasn't mentioned.
So my colleague asked the DNI: I don't see Canada mentioned. Canada is not mentioned as a threat. It is not even mentioned as a threat in fentanyl.
And her testimony at the committee was: You are right. The fentanyl threat is a China and Mexico threat; it is not a Canada threat.
So is there a fentanyl emergency? Yes, there is. Should action be taken to stop it? Yes, there should. Might that action even include looking at tariffs against China for sending precursor chemicals into the United States or into Mexico to be manufactured into fentanyl? It is a fair question. I haven't challenged the China tariffs. Should Mexico be subject to some tough action, possibly including tariffs, because of their role in allowing so much fentanyl to come into the United States? It is a very fair question. That is why I haven't challenged the Mexico tariffs. But even the Trump administration, in their presentation to the Intel Committee, said that Canada was not a fentanyl threat.
This is an article from The Globe and Mail, which is the largest daily newspaper in Canada, published in Toronto from last week:
There is a fentanyl emergency, but it is not Canada. So let's dig into this a little bit further.
In 2024, let me tell you how much fentanyl was seized at the southern border of the United States. It is slightly over 21,000 pounds of fentanyl--devastating, devastating. How about fentanyl seized coming from Canada into the United States--half of that? a quarter of that? a 10th of it? It is about \1/2\, 000th of it. The estimates have been-- although there is a new report that is just coming out, as I am speaking on the floor, from The Globe and Mail, saying even these estimates are high--21,000 pounds from Mexico and 43 pounds from Canada in the entire year of 2024.
The Toronto Globe and Mail is doing an assessment of the 43 pounds, and here is what they found: that the 43 pounds is an overstatement. The 43 pounds includes fentanyl interdicted in some northern cities like Spokane, WA, and those were put on the Canadian interdiction stat even though, when we have dug into it, what we have discovered is, even though Spokane is pretty far north, that fentanyl didn't come in from Canada; it came in from Mexico, and all the people who were arrested as the fentanyl was interdicted in these northern cities were connected to Mexican cartels.
So this gives some scale: 21,000 to 43 pounds, and the 43 pounds is dramatically overestimated. We think this actual number may be down in a very, very few pounds. It is not an emergency from Canada, and it is certainly not an emergency that would justify treating Canadian products with exactly the same tariff that we would levy on products from Mexico and from China.
I think that allies are really important, and I think it is wrong to call an ally an adversary. Here is an article that appeared in the AP a little bit ago that I just want to read into the Record: ``A beloved library that united the U.S. and Canada faces new border restrictions'' because of the President's emergency declaration. This appeared in the Associated Press on March 26, just last week. Let me just read this into the Record.
Why do this? Why do this?
Like President Trump, I think it is right to say, ``America first,'' but I don't want America alone. I don't want an America pushing aside its longstanding allies who have stood with us. Canada stood with us on 9/11. Canada has stood side by side with U.S. troops in every war we have been in. They have fought with our troops. They have bled with our troops. They have died with our troops in every war since the War of 1812. Yet we are going to treat them like an enemy, and we are going to make them go through an emergency exit through a library.
This calls up to my mind memories that I have of a South, when I was born, where a certain kind of people couldn't go in the same doors as other kinds of people. This is no way to treat an ally. This is no way to treat a friend.
As I conclude--I see other colleagues here, ready to speak--I am happy to say that the S.J. Res. 37 has picked up the support of a whole lot of people who I think are pretty important people outside this Chamber. This morning, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce weighed in, in support of S.J. Res. 37. I am going to read from the letter that they have sent to Senators:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports S.J. Res. 37, and they join a number of other organizations: the AFL-CIO. That is threading a needle when I get the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the same page on a matter of such importance. We have the United Steelworkers; the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers; the National Retail Federation. Retailers don't want to see costs of products increase; North America's Building Trades Unions; Sheet Metal Workers; the U.S. Conference of Mayors; Foreign Policy for America; the National Taxpayers Union. Tariffs are a tax; and Advancing American Freedom, a think tank that was established by former Vice President Mike Pence. They all have weighed in to support S.J. Res. 37. Tariffs are a tax. Tariffs will hurt our families. Canada is not an enemy.
Let's act together to fight fentanyl. We can do that. We have done that. We have shown it with the HALT Fentanyl that we passed 2 weeks ago. Let's not label an ally as an enemy. Let's not impose punishing costs on American families at a time they can't afford it. Let's not hurt American small businesses. Let's not make our national security investments and ships and subs more expensive.
I earnestly request that colleagues support S.J. 37 when we vote on it later today.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Terminating the National Emergency Declared to Impose Duties on Articles Imported From Canada
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Committee on Finance is discharged from further consideration of S.J. Res. 37, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there is now 6 hours of debate, equally divided, on the joint resolution.
The Senator from Kentucky.
``Taxation without representation is tyranny,'' bellowed James Otis in the days and weeks and years leading up to the American Revolution.
This became the rallying cry of American patriots: No taxation without representation. The American Patriots thought that a distant Parliament in England where they had no representation had no right to tax them.
This was the rallying cry: ``No taxation without representation.''
Our Founding Fathers believed so strongly in this, they embodied it in our Constitution. Our Constitution doesn't allow any one man or woman to raise taxes. It must be the body of Congress.
Now, this wasn't new. This was part of maybe a thousand-year tradition from Magna Carta on. In Magna Carta, it is stated:
Even at that time they were chafing at one man, the King, determining the taxes for the land.
One hundred years before our Revolutionary War, in the English Civil War, there was a debate over parliamentary supremacy versus supremacy of the King. They did not want to pay taxes that weren't approved by the Parliament.
In 1683, the New York Charter on Liberties, the beginning charter for the colony of New York stated:
And after this English Civil War, the English Bill of Rights embodied: No taxation without the consent of Parliament. This principle was longstanding. It was nonnegotiable. This was what sparked the Revolution. And, yet, today we are here before the Senate because one person in our country wishes to raise taxes.
Well, this is contrary to everything our country was founded upon. One person is not allowed to raise taxes. The Constitution forbids it.
The Constitution was so concerned with the power of taxes--which some have said the power of taxes is the power to destroy--but our Founding Fathers were so concerned with this, that they said: No, the President will not have the power to legislate. The President will not have the power to tax. Only Congress will be able to tax the people and only by originating tax bills in the House.
It was that specific. They were so mortified. They were so worried by having a monarchy. They were so worried about having all the power gravitate to the Executive, that they said: We must split the power.
They based a lot of their thinking on Montesquieu. Montesquieu wrote in the 1740s--40, 50 years before our Constitution. Montesquieu wrote that when the legislative and executive powers are united in one, there can be no liberty. This is something that our Founding Fathers took to heart. They said: We must separate the powers. We must, at all cost, limit the power of the Presidency.
This isn't about political party. I voted for and supported President Trump, but I don't support the rule of one person. We are set--the President is set--to have a 25-percent tax on goods coming from Canada and Mexico. This is a tax--plain and simple--on the American people.
But one person can't do that. Our Founding Fathers said: No, that would be illegal for one person to raise taxes. It has to come to Congress. It has to originate in the House. This has gone on for 200- and-some-odd years.
You can't simply declare an emergency and say: Well, the constitutional Republic was great, but, gosh, we have got an emergency. The times are dire.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly said: There are no exemptions for emergency.
There was no exemption for a pandemic. There was no exemption for emergencies. The taxation clause stands.
It is an important part of the Constitution: Taxes must originate in the House. They must be voted on in Congress. No one man can raise taxes on the people.
They are set to do this through a process in which an emergency has been declared. But realize this: One person declares an emergency, the President. And even if we are successful, which I think we will be successful here today--a majority will vote to say: This is wrong- headed, and the emergency should end. It would have to go to the House. But even if we were successful in the House, the President would veto it. It would take a two-thirds vote in order to stop an emergency. That is such a burden that we need to consider reforming the emergency powers and reversing this.
I think a President can have times that there are emergencies and the President can declare an emergency. But it should last 30 day, at most. At the end of 30 days, the emergency would be brought to the people's House--the House of Representatives and the Senate--and we would vote to affirm or uphold the emergency.
Right now, the pretense of this emergency is fentanyl. I don't discount fentanyl. I know families who have lost kids to fentanyl. But there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than there is from Canada going into the United States.
There is no emergency. The Canadians have actually been cooperative with us and said they will try to do even more. The problem isn't in Canada.
Even if the problem is valid, even if that is something that we all agree on,
Madison put it this way. Madison said that we would pit ambition against ambition; that all men--and, frankly, all women--are motivated by self-interest and the self-accumulation or aggrandizement of power; and so we would limit their power by pitting ambition against ambition. We would give some of the power to the House, some to the Senate, and some to the President. There would be checks and balances in a jostling of power, but we would check and balance each other.
Part of the problem we face today with this emergency, though, is that Congress has abdicated their power--not just recently, not just for this President. This is a bipartisan problem. I am a Republican. I am a supporter of Donald Trump. But this is a bipartisan problem.
I don't care if the President is a Republican or a Democrat. I don't want to live under emergency rule. I don't want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power.
One person can make a mistake. And guess what: Tariffs are a terrible mistake. They don't work. They will lead to higher prices. They are a tax, and they have historically been bad for our economy.
But even if this were something that was magic, and there was going to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I wouldn't want to live under emergency rule. I would want to live in a constitutional republic where there are checks and balances against the excesses of both sides, right or left.
If one person rules, that person could make a horrible mistake.
On things so important as war, it is the same thing. We don't want a President just to go to war because a President might get angry with some country or have a vendetta. We are supposed to vote. That is why there is a declaration of war. War originates also in Congress.
But we have lost so many of these things and so much of this. It is Congress's fault for giving it. Over the last 70 years, there are probably a dozen pieces of legislation where Congress said to the President: Here, take this power. Create emergencies. Put on tariffs. Negotiate for us because we are too feeble-minded to do it ourselves.
But the thing is, the Constitution doesn't let us give our power away. There is something called the nondelegation clause, and it says that we are not allowed to give power away. We can't just say: Here, Mr. President, take it.
In this particular case, it is even worse. The rule of law--IEEPA is the acronym for it--has never been used for tariffs before and doesn't mention the word tariff.
So this isn't something that was targeted in times of need: The President can have the power to put on tariffs. It never says that. This will be an extraordinary use of something never intended to be a way to have--unilateral--one single person invoke a tax on the people.
With regard to tariffs, let's be very clear. Tariffs are simply taxes. Tariffs don't punish foreign governments. They punish American families. When we tax imports, we raise the price of everything from groceries to smartphones, to washing machines, to prescription drugs. Every dollar collected in tariff revenue comes straight out of the pockets of American consumers.
Conservatives used to understand that tariffs are taxes on the American people. Conservatives used to be uniformly opposed to raising taxes because we wanted the private marketplace, the private individuals to keep more of their incomes. So we were always for lower taxes. And yet now the mantra that is coming is: We want higher taxes.
What happened? Did we, all of a sudden, give up all of the things we used to believe in as conservatives?
I, for one, haven't. I still think more taxes is bad for the economy. More money taken out of the productive sector, the private sector, given to the government is a mistake.
To those who still call themselves conservatives but now support tariffs, let me remind them that Milton Friedman said tariffs ``raise prices to consumers and waste our resources.''
To those who still have a fond memory of Ronald Reagan on my side, Ronald Reagan said:
Ronald Reagan's vision for America can be seen in our trading relationships with Canada. In 1986, President Reagan said:
And it is absolutely true. If you look at a chart or a graph of world trade over the last 70 years, it has gone like this. We have been trading more with each other. If you look at a world map of prosperity, it is the same curve. It is a hockey stick. It is going up exponentially.
If you look at a curve of poverty, 100,000 people are escaping poverty every day around the world, and it is because of international trade. Trade is good, not bad.
Think about it. If you buy something, you are trading. If you go to the store and you buy a smartphone, and you give them $1,000, you want that smartphone, and you don't lose. It doesn't matter where the money went; you got your smartphone. You only give money to somebody for something if you want it. If it is a voluntary trade, it is always equal. Well, it is, actually, always mutually beneficial.
And so when people say: Oh, we have lost, and China is winning, and China is winning, and we have a trade deficit with China--America doesn't trade with China. An individual buys a product. You are the trader.
When you go to Walmart and you buy something at Walmart, and you say, ``My goodness, I can get this TV for $200 less than I can get it if there were only domestic TVs,'' you are the contractor. The U.S. Government didn't buy the TV; you bought the TV, and you did it because you saved $200. You are now $200 richer and can go somewhere. You can buy gas to go on a trip somewhere.
If trade were bad, you wouldn't buy the TV. You made the decision; the government didn't.
Our government doesn't trade with their government. Our individuals buy products from their individuals. If it is a voluntary trade, everyone benefits or the trade doesn't occur.
It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the United States and Canada share the world's longest international land border and are continuously at peace.
Canada is a great customer of ours. In fact, Canada buys more American goods than China, Japan, England, and France combined. So do we want the Canadians to buy less of our stuff or more of our stuff?
It is a crazy notion to put a 25-percent tariff on this enormous amount of goods. There are predictions that cars are going to cost $10,000 more because the cars go in and out. We have cars made in Kentucky, but some of the parts go to Mexico. Some of the cars go to Mexico. Some go to Canada. They come back--a $10,000 increase. Do you love the idea of tariffs? Is it such a great word to pay $10,000 more for a car?
Canada is also the leading provider of grain, livestock, meat, and poultry. The United States imported $97 billion worth of oil and gas from Canada last year. Canada is a major provider of cars, car parts, steel, lumber, aluminum.
This amount of trading demonstrates that no American will be able to avoid the high taxes, the high prices. They will be forced to pay because of tariffs. The taxes on Canadian imports will come at a great cost to American families. The taxes on Canadian imports will make the cost of food, fuel, cars, and furniture more expensive.
The former conservatives that now sing a populist tune know deep down that their advocacy of higher taxes will cause suffering for the American family. The converts to this protectionist faith cannot help but acknowledge that even they know that the tariffs will raise prices. They admit it readily. The tariffs that they put on in 2019 are still punishing the farmers in our country to such an extent that the farmers are still asking for more subsidies.
When the Trump tariffs went on in 2018, 2019, the farmers immediately
So we are going to do it again, and they are all lining up. People say we are going to have to bail them out.
Are we going to have to bail out the car companies? Are we going to bail out everybody that is going to be hurt by these tariffs?
It is not a good idea.
The administration is currently considering a bailout for farmers. The idea that the American taxpayer will have to bail out an industry to dull the pain of tariffs is not a novel one. We have seen this one. We have seen this story.
What our parents told us when we were kids is still true today: Actions speak louder than words. The supporters of tariffs know that their policies impose suffering, and they are willing to spend your money to alleviate that harm. So they know tariffs are going to hurt farm exports. So they are going to take your money and give it to the farmers.
Well, what kind of policy acknowledges: Hey, I have got a terrible policy. I am going to hurt these people. We will just give them some of your money.
It makes no sense at all.
In addition to the previous costs, the Peterson Institute estimates that tariffs will cost the average family $1,200 a year. The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that tariffs will cost the average family $4,200 a year. In fact, according to the analysis, tariffs could cost the least fortunate families on average $2,400. The middle class will likely pay higher costs of about $3,000. Tariffs are a cost. Taxes are a cost. If you tax a good, it is added on to the cost. This is what happens. It happens whether inflation is the tax or whether the tax is a tariff. It adds to the cost of goods, and it will be passed on to the consumer.
The average American family won't get the bailouts though. If you are a special interest and the taxes hurt you, the tariffs hurt you, you will get a bailout. But if you are just an average person working for yourself, self-employed, and the tariffs cause all of your groceries to go up and cause your electronics to go up, no one is going to help you; you will just pay higher prices. If you think the cost of eggs is high, just wait until the tariff hits.
Tariffs will raise the price of a car between $5,000 and $15,000. Despite arguments to the contrary, Americans know that tariffs are a tax they will have to pay. That is why vehicle sales jumped almost 13 percent last month--because people are trying to buy their cars before the tariff gets on their car and raises the price. People are smarter than politicians. That is nothing new.
It is not just cars that will be more expensive as a result of tariffs; energy will be more expensive. Gas prices in some parts of the country could see a 15- to 30-cent per-gallon increase in price.
According to the National Association of Home Builders, the building of a single-family home could become up to $10,000 more expensive. Why? Because we import lumber. We import steel. If we make it more expensive to import lumber from Canada and steel from Canada, the price of your house goes up.
Look, people already can't buy a house because interest rates are so high. Young people are living in apartments. More and more, people feel stuck in their life, and we are going to add to the price of lumber and steel to make homes even harder to purchase? It is a terrible idea.
Washing machines were already almost $100 more expensive as a result of the original tariffs 4 years ago.
Here is really bad news: Even beer will become more expensive. A professor at Northeastern University states that a six-pack of Corona could go up by 45 cents, but a small craft beer could be increased by as much as $1 a pint.
The former and never-were conservatives who try to sell tariffs as anything other than a tax cannot fool the American people, who know that their purchasing power will be weakened with every new protectionist measure unilaterally imposed by the White House.
None of these tax hikes are necessary. The populists argue that the threat of tariffs is needed to force Canada to stop the flow of illicit drugs. In fact, one of the social media posts today said there was going to be a tariff on fentanyl. Really? You think the drug dealers are going to pay a tariff on fentanyl? Fentanyl is not being tariffed. That is some kind of mistaken notion. This isn't going to happen. As I have stated, there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than there is coming from Canada to the United States.
It is not a real emergency. It is being used to place a tax on the American people.
But already we have seen a response from Canada. In response to the threat of tariffs, Canada announced a $1.3 billion plan dedicated to border security, to up border security on fentanyl. Yet the tariffs are still coming despite their help. They have also announced more tariffs as well.
The threat of tariffs seems to have worked. We need not make Canada and America go through this when they have already responded to our request.
The chaos of one day the tariffs are on, one day they are off, the next day there is a loophole for this industry or that industry, is chaotic and is leading to turmoil in our markets.
A week ago, when the thought of tariffs came forward, the markets plunged to historically low levels.
The tariffs on Canadian imports, the tariffs on Mexican imports, the tariffs on European imports--the chaos it creates in the marketplace makes it difficult to plan for businesses.
The interesting thing also about the tariffs is--some have said: Well, you know, the people will see that we are standing up for them with tariffs and we are for America first. Yet, when we put tariffs on historically, it has been Republicans.
In 1890, McKinley put tariffs on. He was all for it. So there were people lauding McKinley. In 1890, the big McKinley tariff goes on. Do you know what happened in 1892? Out of 170 Republicans, they lost 100 seats because prices went up with tariffs.
Has this ever happened before? Yes. It happened in the 1840s when they put on the ``Tariff of Abominations'' under John Quincy Adams. He signed it. Once again, the ruling party lost seats.
When is the last time this happened in dramatic fashion? Well, if you study history and you want to know when the Republicans went to their lowest ebb in the entire history of our country, it came after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the early 1930s. Hoover was President, a Republican. Republicans controlled Congress. They passed this dramatic tariff, which most historians and most economists now say prolonged the Depression for 10 years and caused the worst part of the Depression to actually be in 1937--7 years after the tariff and nearly 8 years after the stock market crash.
Do you know what happened to the Republicans in 1932? The Democrats won the Presidency, and they won the House. Do you know when Republicans got back in charge after 1932? It was 1994 in the House and in the eighties in the Senate. They went 50, 60 years into the desert because tariffs were such a turmoil to the country that the country rejected Republicans for nearly half a century.
The emergency declaration we are considering today is unprecedented. By declaring an emergency, the President invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. They call it IEEPA, but it is an acronym. Don't get me started about government acronyms. It is a law that has been used to put sanctions on, like, Iran. That is what it was intended for. But it was never intended for tariffs and ``tariffs'' doesn't appear in the law.
Using this bill to impose tariffs is attractive to a President. He doesn't have to work with the messiness of democracy, the messiness of Congress. But do you know what? That messiness is a check and a balance on power. Unlike most of our trade laws that require several procedural hurdles, IEEPA just says ``Declare an emergency,'' and it becomes very hard for Congress to overturn this.
When the Trump administration first implemented tariffs on China, it took 11 months before the tariffs could take effect. By using IEEPA, the technique now, the tariffs have an almost immediate effect.
We are not at war with Canada. I don't even think we have real disagreements with Canada. They are an ally that buys more of our stuff than almost any other country in the world.
Expediency is not the same as legality, though. As legal scholars have pointed out, there is reason to believe that this bill--this IEEPA, this emergency bill--does not authorize the President to impose tariffs for at least two reasons.
First, despite broad powers conferred to the President by this act, the plain, simple text does not mention the ability to impose a tax, tariff, or duty. It runs counter to Congress's habit of clearly referencing tariff authorities in other trade statutes. This may explain why no previous President has attempted to use emergency powers to impose tariffs.
Second, it is difficult to see how using this emergency power, this IEEPA Act and a national emergency, to impose tariffs would comport with something called the major questions doctrine. Under this doctrine, the Supreme Court will reject claims of Executive authority on issues of vast economic and political significance. It is hard to imagine that a 25-percent tax on everything from Canada would not be considered to be of vast economic significance.
Congress has not clearly empowered this administration. I think it is hard to even argue that it is ambiguous. The power was never granted. This question is ripe, and this power is ripe to be rejected by the Supreme Court.
Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of imports from Canada are at issue here. Clearly, this is a major economic question. Yet Congress has not expressly delegated the authority to impose tariffs to the President.
We need to return to constitutional government. We used to abide by the ancient principle of ``no taxation without representation.''
One of the first acts enacted into the law was the Tariff Act of 1789, which sought to generate revenue by placing a 5-percent tax on all imported goods and was signed into law, after passage by Congress, by George Washington.
Alexander Hamilton's ``Report on Manufacturers'' is well known. According to Professor Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College, every tariff recommendation put forth in the report was adopted by Congress in 1792. But simply voting on tariffs does not convert them into a good idea. It could make them constitutional. It could make this legal if Congress voted on it. It would still be economically a bad idea.
As we move forward in this debate, you will see that there are people on both sides of the aisle who question really whether we should be ruled by one person or whether the power should be separated. To me, this is not a partisan question. Some will try to make it a partisan question. To me, it makes no difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. This is about the distribution of power. This is about the separation of power. This is about the admonition that Montesquieu gave us that when the Executive power and the legislative power are united in one person, there can be no liberty.
Our Founding Fathers all believed that. They so feared the power of taxation that they gave it only to Congress. They so feared the power of taxation that they gave it specifically to originate in the House before it came to the Senate because the House was closer to the people, with elections every 2 years.
This goes against the traditions of our country. I stand to speak against these tariffs. I stand to speak against these emergencies. I stand against the idea of skipping democracy, of skipping the constitutional republic, of rejecting our founding principles, not because I have any animus toward the President; I do this because I love my country, and I want to see the division of power enabled such that it protects us all from the amalgamation of power into one person such that it can be abused.
Another name for ``emergency rule'' is ``martial law.'' Who would want to live under one person? That is the thing we all object to. In all the countries around the world that we object to is the idea that they don't have democratic rule.
We should vote. This is a tax, plain and simple. Taxes should not be enacted by one person.
So I will vote today to end the emergency. I will vote today to try to reclaim the power of taxation, the power of the tariff to where the Constitution designated it should properly be, and that is in Congress.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
Madam President, I want to spend a few minutes first talking about Russia.
To get respect, you have to act respectfully. To be taken seriously, you have to act seriously. We know that. It is a matter of common sense.
President Putin in Russia is not acting with respect toward the United States of America or President Trump. President Putin is not acting seriously.
I don't know a single fairminded person with an IQ above his age who doesn't want peace in Ukraine. We all want to see peace in Ukraine. President Zelenskyy wants to see peace in Ukraine. President Trump wants to see peace in Ukraine. I thought President Putin did. I am beginning to wonder.
President Trump, who is leading these negotiations, first asked for a cease-fire. He said: For 30 days--maybe 45, 60 days--I am asking both Russia and Ukraine to lay down their arms.
President Putin said: No, I won't agree to a blanket cease-fire, but I will stop bombing infrastructure in Ukraine. He lied like he breathed. He continued to destroy civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
Then President Trump said: OK. Let's try for a cease-fire in the Black Sea.
That would benefit both Ukraine and Russia, both of which use the Black Sea for maritime commerce. And, indeed, the world depends on a lot of the grain that they both export.
So President Trump said: Let's try for a cease-fire in the Black Sea and maritime security in the Black Sea.
President Zelenskyy said: ``Sure, I am with you,'' just like he said previously, ``I agree to a ceasefire, Mr. President.''
President Putin said: I will agree to a cease-fire in the Black Sea, but I want conditions. I want conditions.
And do you know what his conditions are?--to have the United States of America remove the sanctions on the Russian economy.
Then, to make matters worse, President Putin said: Oh, by the way, I have one other condition. I want to put the people of Ukraine and the Government of Ukraine under the administration of the United Nations.
In other words, he wants the people of Ukraine to give up their democratic form of government and be run by the United Nations.
Then, finally, President Putin said to President Trump: Oh, yes. There is one other thing, too, before I will agree to a cease-fire in the Black Sea or to a cease-fire generally.
``I don't want to just negotiate with you, President Trump,'' President Putin said.
He said: I want China to be part of the negotiations and India and Brazil and South Africa--and get this; this will curdle your lunch-- North Korea.
Mama Gump said that stupid is as stupid does. President Putin is not interested in peace. President Putin thinks President Trump took the bullet train to Chump Town.
I mean, I can tell you how I look at this and, I think, how most Americans look at this situation. I think to myself: You know, my mama didn't raise a fool, and if she did, it was one of my brothers. I see what Putin is doing. He is not serious here.
I would gently--no. I take that back. I would firmly suggest to President Putin: If you want peace, stop treating President Trump and the American people like a bunch of chumps. Stop it. If you want respect, act respectfully. If you want to be taken seriously, act seriously--because his conduct toward President Trump's hand of peace has been despicable. It would gag a maggot.
(Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)
Now, Mr. President, on a separate subject, I want to talk about Canada.
By the way, my colleague here today, Nick Ayers, is with me. Nick is one of my colleagues in my Senate office, and I thank him for being here today.
I want to talk for a moment about Canada. I want to make it clear: I love
The United States of America and Canada have been friends and allies for decades. We are neighbors. We share a 5,525-mile border. I am proud of that. We share history. We share values. We maintain longstanding mutual security commitments. We are both members of NATO. Canada and America are members of the binational North American Aerospace Defense Command. You probably know that as NORAD.
It is more than just security commitments, though. It is more than just business. We are friends, and I am proud of that. I remember, on 9/11--who will ever be able to forget 9/11--U.S. airspace was shut down. The people of Canada stepped right up to the plate. They immediately implemented Operation Yellow Ribbon. They opened their airports. The Canadians opened their homes. The Canadians opened their hearts to 33,000 Americans who were stranded.
There is a little town in Newfoundland called Gander. I remember this, too, that Gander has 10,000 people, but they welcomed thousands of American passengers. They fed them. They sheltered them. They comforted our American citizens. They gave them a little bit of peace at a scary time for America and the world. There was no hesitation by the people of Canada. It was only humanity. I will never forget that.
I remember, after Hurricane Katrina, which hit my State, it destroyed Southeast Louisiana--New Orleans, yes, but many other parts of my State as well--and Mississippi. Canada was the very first country and the people of Canada were the very first people to send disaster relief. Their program was called Operation UNISON. Their military ships sailed south to help us in Louisiana. They sent 1,000 people and a lot of supplies. And do you know what? The good people of Canada did the same thing when we had the horrible fires in California.
Here is my point: I don't want to be at war with Canada. I don't want to have a trade war with Canada. I want us to continue to be friends. I made this suggestion to the new Prime Minister of Canada the other day, Prime Minister Carney. I am going to make it again, and I hope, this time, he will take it more seriously. Remember, if you want to be taken seriously, you have to act seriously. If you want respect, you have to act respectfully.
Prime Minister Carney, you say that President Trump is not a fair trader. I understand your point of view. I don't agree with you, but I understand your point of view. You have got to stand up for your people. Prime Minister Carney, if you believe in free trade, then here is what you do. Make this offer today: Offer to go to zero tariffs in Canada on American goods--no tariffs, none, zero, zilch, nada--and challenge America to remove all of our tariffs on Canada so the people of Canada can sell their goods to Americans without a tariff, and the people of America can sell their goods to our friends in Canada without a tariff--zero tariffs. Let Canadian businesses and American businesses compete. Competition makes all of us better. That is one of the shared values that we have with our friends in Canada. Let American businesses and Canadian businesses go at it in a friendly, competitive way and may the best price and the best product win. That is fair trade. That is free trade.
If Prime Minister Carney wants fair trade and free trade, he will make that offer. I don't speak for President Trump, but I will certainly encourage President Trump to accept that offer, and I think he will.
There is a way to stop this trade war. It is just to remove the tariffs on both sides. Remember what Mama Gump said:
Let's don't be stupid. Let's don't have a trade war. Let's continue to be friends. Let's get rid of these tariffs.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that confirmation of the Sauer and Dhillon nominations be at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic Leader, during Thursday's session of the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, just over 2 weeks ago, the Senate passed the HALT Fentanyl Act with bipartisan support. As I said at the time, this bill joins other efforts to combat the fentanyl crisis that is taking so many lives in our country.
But now Democrats seem to want to take a step backward in that fight. They want to end the emergency that President Trump declared that addresses the flow of fentanyl across the northern border from Canada.
Fentanyl moves in a sophisticated supply chain. Precursor chemicals are shipped from China to North America--landing in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Those chemicals are then used to produce fentanyl, which is smuggled into the United States across borders or sent through the mail.
Now, much of the fentanyl that comes into the United States comes from the southern border from Mexico. And I am glad that President Trump has taken swift action to secure the border with Mexico and address the flow of drugs across that border.
But we would be wrong to view this as solely a southern border problem. The reality is that fentanyl production is growing in Canada. One 30-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police specializing in transnational crime said:
Canada's financial intelligence agency has identified about 100 organized crime groups involved in fentanyl production in the country. That is four times--four times--as many as there were in 2022. Canadian law enforcement has raided drug ``super labs''--sophisticated fentanyl production facilities that may have links to the cartels.
For now, most fentanyl from Canada enters the United States in small amounts--often through the mail. But as one cartel member told ``60 Minutes'' last month, cartels are already smuggling fentanyl across our northern border.
So what will happen if we focus on fentanyl coming across the southern border and from China but fail to address the northern border component of this crisis? Will the cartels simply shift tactics and expand their operations to the north? I think we can be confident the answer to that question is yes.
We have already seen some illegal immigrants attempt that shift when faced with stricter security measures at the southern border. And last week, the FBI Director warned the House Intelligence Committee that our enemies will adapt to security measures at the southern border by shifting resources to the northern border.
If we are serious about ending the fentanyl crisis in America, we need to address the entirety of the crisis. We are not going to solve the problem by going after just part of it. Ending this emergency declaration will tell the cartels that they should shift their focus to the northern border.
So I urge my colleagues to oppose this resolution and ensure that President Trump has the tools that he needs to combat the flow of fentanyl from all directions.
This is the second resolution seeking to end an emergency that the Senate has considered in the last few weeks. Last time, it was ending the national energy emergency. Now it is ending an emergency related to fentanyl.
The American people recognize that these are legitimate crises and that they warrant an aggressive response. President Trump and Republicans promised that we would unleash American energy and end the lawlessness at our borders, and we intend to keep those promises.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. President, I stand before you all today to seek unanimous consent for S. 959, the Tariff Transparency Act, my bill that will demand a nonpartisan study on this administration's tariffs and how they will impact everyday Americans.
This administration came in the door saying they would lower costs and ease burdens on American families. These tariffs would do the exact opposite. The President readily admits that these tariffs will disrupt the economy, but he claims two things: that there will only be a minor disruption and says that they will cause a little bit of pain.
Maybe it will only be minor to those who are billionaires, but to everyday Americans, to the people who go to work every day to provide for their families--the families like the family I grew up in, a blue- collar family, a father who is a car salesman and a mother who is a receptionist--well, they can't afford any disruptions, and they cannot afford any further pain.
They deserve instead to know the truth about the Trump tariffs on the front end. They deserve to know exactly how the Trump tariffs will affect their day-to-day lives. They deserve to understand how these moves will change the price of groceries. They deserve to be told if the Trump tariffs will make energy costs more expensive or if their dream of owning a home or a car will be made more impossible. What they don't deserve is to be subjected to this indiscriminate and chaotic approach to this economy that is already not working for everyone.
If these tariffs do depress the economy and a recession comes, which many, many economists are now predicting, it will not be the billionaires who are affected the most. It will be American small businesses that are burdened. It will be American consumers that are harmed. At the end of the day, it will be the American people who are footing the bill for the Trump tariffs.
When we talk about American people, let's be clear. This is the middle class. These are working-class, hard-working people who will be impacted.
Do you know what? This administration knows the truth. They know that these tariffs will raise prices and spike inflation and harm American businesses, but they want to hide it from the American people until it is too late. This is absolutely unacceptable. It is, in fact, wrong.
The American people need someone to stand up for them, so I am here today to stand up for them, to speak for middle-class families across Maryland and across America, working people across the country, to defend the Americans who are fighting to keep a roof over their heads and food on their table and can't afford the chaos that is ensuing in their lives.
I shouldn't be standing for them by myself. They are who we all should be fighting for. They are the ones who sent us here to represent them. They sent us here to make their lives easier. They should be on our minds before any actions that we take in this Chamber.
So I ask unanimous consent that the Senate pass the Tariff Transparency Act. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 959 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there any objection?
Reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
The sponsors seek the International Trade Commission, or ITC, to conduct a study under section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The study would examine the domestic impact of President Trump's tariffs on Canada and Mexico and of potential retaliatory measures.
Section 338 studies are resource-intensive endeavors for the ITC. The chair of Finance is one of the individuals authorized to request such studies and historically has done so sparingly to conserve precious few ITC resources.
I fail to see why we should expend those resources when a number of private groups are already developing economic models on the tariffs at issue.
Furthermore, it bears emphasis that the tariffs are not redressing economic issues but, rather, the Biden administration's failure to secure the border from fentanyl and migration. Yes, tariffs have economic costs, but they can be used as tools too.
The cost of President Biden allowing fentanyl and migrants to flood into the United States is quite high. The proposed bill has no interest in trying to quantify the impact of the Biden administration's failure. Instead, it selectively targets only the new Trump administration for trying to redress a serious public health and national security threat.
Accordingly, because the bill unnecessarily expends the ITC's resources and is not balanced, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Maryland.
Madam President, in response to that, I say respectfully that I think we have been presented a false choice. In this moment, I think it is really important for us to be able to not only respond to the fentanyl crisis that we have certainly seen in our country--we have seen it in Maryland, and we have seen it all across the country--but I think the urgency of the moment requires to some extent that we are able to walk and chew gum.
We have to fight fentanyl, but we also have to respond to the devastation and respond to the uncertainty and the pain that is created by the tariffs that do directly attack the middle class.
All we are asking in this moment, if these tariffs are so harmless to the American people, well, let's prove it. Allow the bipartisan group, the International Trade Commission, to do the study and to give the American people the benefit of information about how these tariffs will impact their everyday lives, how it will affect the bottom line. Will it, in fact, cause the cost of groceries to rise? Will it, in fact, cause energy costs to increase? Will it, in fact, cause housing to increase?
I think the American people deserve answers, and in this moment where chaos is ensuing all around them, where they are losing their jobs, where they are losing--many of them--the funding streams that help seniors and children to eat, the very least we could do would be to provide information to hard-working families, like the one I grew up in, answers about how these tariffs will, in fact, affect them.
Again, I don't believe that we have to consider the false choice about whether or not we protect our borders against fentanyl and also whether or not we protect the American people.
The President has said this is liberation day. I want to know whom we are liberating. Are we liberating the billionaires who benefit from these tariffs that allow the tax cuts or are we really fighting for middle-class people?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Madam President, to respond briefly, this entire day is being spent almost entirely on attacking President Trump's tariffs. This is another attack on them.
The bottom line is that the economic data that is being discussed is being created, and the bottom line is that part of this day is to help continue the effort to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States and stop the flow of illegal migration into the United States that should have been stopped by the previous administration.
I continue my objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Madam President, I have to agree. We have finally made it to Donald Trump's promise and self-proclaimed liberation day. But here is what I also observe: The stock market is down since the beginning of the year. The cost of everything from groceries to housing continues to rise. Americans' retirement funds have shrunk. The chances of a recession are up.
That sure doesn't feel like a liberation to me.
I bring these examples up simply to highlight the hypocrisy of this administration. Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to lower prices on day one of his administration, but he has done
To make matters worse, he is simply lying about it. In fact, his top trade adviser has gone on record promising Americans that we all must just be confused and that the tariffs are really actually tax cuts. This administration thinks so little of the American people that they think that somehow we won't know the difference between whether our personal wealth is growing or shrinking.
So let's be clear. A tariff is a tax on the American people--plain and simple. Trump's tariffs equate to the biggest tax hike on Americans in decades, because the way tariffs work is this: American companies will have to pay more to import goods, and in turn, the American people will have to pay more to buy those products.
Donald Trump knows this. It is not that he doesn't know; it is that he doesn't care. And those aren't my words; they are his. Just this past weekend, he was asked about the effects that his tariffs will have on the price of cars, as one example. He said: ``I couldn't care less if they raise prices.'' He followed it up by saying: ``I hope they raise prices.'' Again, those aren't my words; those are words from President Trump.
Well, colleagues, maybe the richest President in history doesn't care when the cost of a new car or the cost of a new home or the cost of groceries go up, but for the people that I represent in my home State of California and the working-class neighborhoods like the one I grew up in, this is not a game.
Here is what is most concerning to me: It seems like Republicans in Congress simply want to double down on this agenda of making the working class pay more in order to pass even more tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
The latest number, as the proposals continue to evolve, is $5.3 trillion in tax breaks for the wealthy. It is clearly the No. 1 priority for Republicans. Well, to do that, to pay for that, working families are just going to have to work harder?
These same Republicans who want to give the tax breaks to the wealthy are also the ones supposedly concerned about our Nation's growing deficit. They are trying to tell us that, well, we have to make cuts to Medicaid or other important programs in the Federal Government. They say we have to make cuts to nutrition assistance programs. They say we have to make cuts to public education. They will go one further: They are trying to eliminate the Department of Education.
I grant them this: If nothing else, the Republican Party's economic plan has been consistent. They want to bleed the working class to benefit the rich, and they are going to lie to our faces as they try to do it. It is unacceptable.
Now, we know Republicans are already also considering any and every accounting trick they can think of to fudge the numbers and hide the real cost of the bill.
So my resolution would simply require that they be transparent with the American people. It would require that any tariff used to offset the tax cuts for the wealthy must be explicitly written into the text of the Republican reconciliation bill.
If Republicans want to increase prices on hard-working Americans to give handouts to billionaires, then own it.
You should not be allowed to hide behind President Trump as you do it. Be transparent. Be honest. Put these price increases into the bill. Tell the American people what you really stand for, because when Americans wonder why their grocery bills and their energy bills and all their other bills go up, they deserve to know why, and they deserve to know who caused it.
And then we will see who is really on the side of the working class.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of my concurrent resolution, which is at the desk; that the concurrent resolution be agreed to; and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Idaho.
Madam President, reserving the right to object, I said in response to the last unanimous consent request that this was a day to attack the President's tariffs, and this unanimous consent request continues that trend. But, ironically, this one adds in an attack on the tax bill that President Trump and we on the Republican side are fighting to enact.
And, once again, we see the politics of fear playing out, saying to Americans that you are going to have all kinds of dire things happen to you so that we can cut taxes for the wealthy. This is a standard attack that has been used for over a decade, and it is no truer today than it has been.
The reality is--and I think most Americans are starting to understand this--that the very tax bill that we put into place 10 years ago, which gave us the strongest economy we have had in years; reduced the deficit dramatically; helped us to create more jobs than we have historically seen, particularly for lower income individuals; and made a capital formation explosion in the United States, stopping all of those large companies from moving their assets out of the United States and moving their jobs out of the United States and made America once again the place where capital is, where America is the place where people come from the world to form capital.
If we do not extend that tax law, there will be a $4.3 trillion tax hike. I am going to say that again: a $4.3 trillion tax increase on all Americans. The average American household will see over $2,500 go up in their tax bill. Madam President, $2.6 trillion of that tax will go to people making less than $400,000 per year, and another 600,000 will go to small businesses--tax hikes hitting small businesses.
What we are fighting to do is to reduce taxes, to keep them stable, rather than letting them go up. That is what this battle is about.
So this unanimous consent request says we can't use revenue from tariffs to offset the costs of saving and protecting those tax increases.
The issue is whether there will be any tariffs in the reconciliation bill, and that is not settled. We don't even know whether that will be done.
But the rules of math have been settled. When someone pays an import tariff, they have paid an amount that is deposited in the U.S. Treasury and adds to the total of our Treasury funds; that is mathematical truth. That basic arithmetic is settled and is consistent with how we calculate and estimate America's revenue.
Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office's June 2024 report notes that revenue from existing tariffs from 2024 to 2034 could total $872 billion. We can debate whether tariff rates should be higher or lower to bring that total number up or down, but we cannot change the fact that money entering the Treasury, pursuant to law, should be counted as money entering the Treasury.
And to do it in the name of trying to stop tax increases, when what we are doing is stopping the tax increases? Those fighting this are trying to let that bill expire so that everybody in America's taxes can go up, so that we can have more spending.
This is the old tax-and-spend debate with the spin of the politics of fear on it. And because of that, I reject this unanimous consent, and I object to it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from California.
So I thank my colleague for his response, but I take issue with some items that I do believe need to be addressed and clarified.
He makes the claim that the tax reforms from about a decade ago, I believe it was 2017 to be more precise, was good for the economy. It begs the question: Good for whose economy? Good for whose pocketbook? The breaks were disproportionately for the most wealthy in America, and average working families didn't benefit nearly, nearly as much. That is where we should be focusing relief, No. 1.
No. 2, he argues that the math has been settled because when tariffs are imposed, those are revenues going into the U.S. Treasury. I repeat: When the costs go up by American companies importing products, they are going to pass along that increased cost to American consumers. So it is a tax by another name.
And the last point I will make is this because it was relevant in the Environment and Public Works Committee
It is going to increase costs. It is going to delay projects. And, once again, who pays the price? Working families across America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
We have had this debate for 10 years. The facts are out. The biggest beneficiaries were the lower middle and upper middle income families in America. The biggest hit, if we don't extend these tax cuts, will be the lower middle and upper middle income families in America.
Under that bill, we had more jobs, higher wages, higher benefits. The average family's net wealth went up to historic highs, and that is what is at stake right now.
The bottom line here is, you can throw all the numbers around that you want, but the people in America know we had the strongest economy in our lifetimes as this tax cut went into place. And if we see this tax cut expire, we have seen the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce give us the data--a million jobs lost. We are going to see GDP and our growth go down by at least a percentage point, and the same kind of negative impacts on the economy will happen every time we have a massive tax increase in this country.
This battle, no matter how you want to characterize it, is over whether we should have another massive $4.3 trillion tax increase, and I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Madam President, I rise today in strong support of a bipartisan resolution led by my colleague who is here today, Senator Tim Kaine, which I colead with him and Senator Warner to restore stability to our trade with one of our greatest allies, greatest friends, and that is the country of Canada.
This resolution does one thing, and it does it clearly. It terminates the President's declaration related to the Canadian border that he is using as an excuse to impose across-the-board tariffs--which are, in fact, taxes--on Canadian imports under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Passing this resolution just became even more urgent because of the President's announcement of even more across-the-board tariffs this afternoon, including a minimum 10-percent tax on all imports and even higher tariffs on certain countries--including our friends and allies.
This is a country that has thrived on the fact and our economy has grown because we do business with the world. And, already, with the President's announcement--which he called ``Liberation Day''; I call it a ``National Sales Tax Day'' because the estimates are that these tariffs will result in about $5,000 in taxes--that is right--on the average family in America every single year.
What has happened? Well, the stock market is closed, but the futures are tanking. They are tanking. And that is because people get that this is not going to work for our American economy.
They don't want a national sales tax. People involved in the economy of this country, everyone from small business owners on, are going to be the first hit by this because they do not actually have the wherewithal and the big conglomeration to try to deal with it.
Small farmers in my State that are already dealing with retaliatory tariffs, are already dealing with the fact that Canadians who used to buy their stuff don't want to buy it anymore or other countries aren't buying their stuff.
And what happens then? The Canadians look for other markets. And there are other countries, other manufacturers, other farmers in other nations that say: We are more than happy to fill your contract, sir. We are more than happy to help you out with that aluminum, ma'am, because of these tariffs.
Tourism from Canada right now, the numbers just came out, down 75 percent. That is hotels; that is restaurants. You think they don't know what is going on in Canada? They are looking at every single move. First, they were shocked, and now they are pissed, and that is exactly what is happening right now.
This resolution is about drawing a line in the sand and saying: You cannot abuse your emergency powers to start an unjustified trade war. You cannot abuse your emergency powers for one of the finest relationships in the world, the relationship between America and Canada. And you cannot drive up prices, eliminate jobs, and put in place a national sales tax.
Canada is not just our neighbor. With my State, it is our No. 1 trading partner. In fact, we do so much business with Canada, that it is more than the total of our No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 largest markets combined. We are the fourth biggest ag exporter, the State of Minnesota, in the country. So we know a little bit about how this works. In 2023 alone, our State exported 7 billion in goods to Canada, including ag products, machinery, and medical devices.
That is a major hit for the retaliatory tariffs that we are going to see. The damage can extend to every sector of our economy.
I just mentioned tourism. So I chair the Canada-United States Inter- Parliamentary Group. I go to Canada a lot. I know our partners over there. I know the people in the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, all of them. And the one thing that has united us to a tee is this friendship that has far transcended this President.
I remember it was the Canadian Embassy in one of the worst of times for our country that had banners draped in the front of their Embassy that said: ``Friends, Neighbors, Partners, Allies.'' Those banners aren't hanging there right now, and they are not going to put them up anytime soon.
It was the Canadians that were the first to arrive after 9/11 to volunteer to help out our country in its greatest moment of need. They fought alongside us in two World Wars. This is a longstanding friendship and an incredible trade relationship based on mutual respect and trust, and, yes, two strong economies.
Because these new tariffs are already causing harm, as I noted, they amount to a national sales tax.
Since the administration began to propose and implement or pause but hang over people's head wide-ranging tariffs, wholesale prices have gone up on everything from meat and coffee to natural gas and lumber.
Homeowner Association, Home Builders Association, Retail Association--how many business groups? Are the Republicans not listening to them anymore? And add to that the Steelworkers. Do they not care about that? They are opposed to that, and they support this resolution that Senator Kaine and Warner and I have come together to introduce.
With these tariffs across the world, we are going to see a $20,000 increase to the price of a home and a $3,000 increase to an American- made car. This might not mean much to Elon Musk and the billionaires in Trump's Cabinet, but it means a lot to the people in my State.
Tariffs can be an important tool. Sure you can have targeted tariffs. That is not what this is. These tariffs on Canada are an abuse of the emergency powers. And if they want to negotiate this, put it in the upcoming negotiations of the USMCA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that I supported, that President Trump negotiated in his last administration. Why wouldn't he do it there? Why instead is he doing his usual shock and awe, jarring the economy? This is going to be a blanket permission slip for tariff wars.
I will note again: Thanks, Senator Kaine, and our bipartisan group of supporters.
The United Steelworkers, International Association of Machinists, North America's Building Trades Union, AFL-CIO, Chamber of Commerce, National Taxpayers Union, and National Retail Federation have all endorsed this resolution.
Maybe we don't care about all those businesses and all those workers, but maybe we should listen to them.
This resolution is about restoring common sense and responsible governance. It is about Congress reasserting its constitutional role on trade. And it is about standing up for American workers, businesses, and consumers that are being asked to pay the price of this trade war.
Let's change course before the damage becomes even more permanent. I urge my colleagues to support this resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Madam President, I fully support the resolution of Senator Kaine, and I want to make three points.
No. 1, should Congress continue to abdicate its constitutional responsibility, ceding it to the Executive?
No. 2, I want to talk about the total fantasy--fantasy world--that the Trump economic agenda is grounded in, if you can use the word ``grounded.''
And then, third, I want to talk about how these tariffs will be a dagger in the heart of the Vermont economy.
First of all, the question for this institution is, Will we, as the U.S. Senate, accept the responsibility that each and every one of us as Senators has to stand up for the independent authority and responsibility of this institution?
As we know, our Constitution was based on the proposition of real suspicion of the accumulation of power in any one entity. What was told to us in the Federalist Papers is what we know: If you have the concentration of power in any institution, that concentration of power leads inevitably to the abuse of power.
The design of our Constitution was to have equal and independent branches. And what I am seeing is a lawless rampage on the part of the Executive being accommodated by an appeasing Congress, not standing up for its authority in many different areas, and then also an attack on the judiciary, as though the judges who disagree with an Executive position should be impeached. But our authority over the budget is being abdicated, as we saw in the CR.
But another area of authority for the Congress is the tariff authority.
A couple of decades ago, this Congress gave and delegated some authority to the President in a national emergency to impose tariffs. That authority was given with the expectation--and rightly so, in a mutually respectful civil society--that a President would use it for the intended purpose and with restrain, whether it was Republican or Democrat, and that national security had the connotation and implication of a military threat to our country, where there needed to be immediate Executive action to protect the citizens of this country.
What President Trump has done is run roughshod over that, showing no restraint in using that delegation of authority, not for a national emergency but for whatever his latest policy ideas are and whatever leverage he wants to extract.
We cannot allow that to happen and maintain the separation of powers. It is absolutely so fundamental to the long-term well-being of our country.
So Senator Kaine is absolutely right. This is not a partisan question. It is an institutional question. Do we see our responsibility for maintaining that system of checks and balances? I do. That is the heart of this matter, and it is as important as even the outcome of what this tariff policy may be.
Second, where does this tariff policy come from? It comes from the President who is claiming that it will be a new golden age if we impose these tariffs.
By the way, these are astonishing tariffs: South Korea, 25 percent; Vietnam, 46 percent; Taiwan, 32 percent; Switzerland, 31 percent; Malaysia, 24 percent; Cambodia, 49 percent. Do we realistically think there will be no retaliation against America for these tariffs? We know there will be.
Yet what the President seems to think--and this literally is a fantasy--is that the golden age of America was when we had the tariff policy that economic historians say caused the Depression, but he says, if we had had the tariff policy, then we wouldn't have had the Depression. There is literally no support for this.
So the President has come up with this fiction, and what he is good at is sales. He says it over and over again. He cloaks it in an appealing objective: We want to have jobs back in America. And that is certainly something all of us share. But this fantasy he has--and it is a fantasy--that high tariffs are going to ``make us rich'' and be paid for by other countries instead of our consumers--just ask anybody who goes to Target or Walmart how that is going to work out for them. Ask anybody who is going to want to build a house or buy a house, where the prices are going to go up probably $25,000 in Vermont for a house.
The third thing I want to talk about is very concretely in Vermont. This is devastating for us in Vermont. Our farmers get most of their fertilizer from Canada--a 25-percent increase. Our farmers are on the margin. They are operating on such a thin margin that a 25-percent increase raises the existential question of whether they stay in business.
Our maple sugar producers get their equipment largely from Canada--a 25-percent increase in the expense of buying an evaporator.
Vermont consumers and businesses--we in Vermont are along the northern border. I see my colleague from New Hampshire. It is the same for you. We get so much of our home heating fuel, so much of our gasoline to power our cars, and so much of our electricity from Canada, that at the end of that month, when you are juggling your checkbook and trying to make it balance, you are going to have a higher electric bill, and you are going to have a higher home heating bill. And every time you fill up, you are going to pay between 25 cents and 40 cents more a gallon because in northern Vermont, that is where our gasoline comes from.
How is that going to serve anybody's interest? How is that going to help the people who are working hard every day to try to make ends meet? It is going to be devastating for them.
And in addition to all that uncertainty, we have a responsibility to make, through policy, the lives of our folks in business, the lives of our farmers, the lives of our moms and dads easier, not harder. In this uncertainty that is the hallmark of the Trump approach and these higher costs that are absolutely legislated as a result of his policy or by Executive order, that is going to make life harder for all of the people that I represent in Vermont.
Instead of just using my words, I want to use the words of a lot of Vermonters. When we got word of these tariffs going into effect, we had a couple of roundtables up in northern Vermont, in St. Albans and in Newport. Obviously, I wanted to hear from voters. Here is how they say it.
And, by the way, this is not a partisan deal. This is somebody who is trying to run a business, somebody who is trying to pay their bills and support their family. It is a construction company, a vegetable farmer.
Stoni Tomson:
Vermont Foodbank, Jason Maring:
Catherine de Ronde of Agri-Mark:
Matt Cook from PC Construction:
Denis Bourbeau of Bourbeau Custom Homes. They build about three or four homes a year--a good business in Northern Vermont:
Another:
This is just another vivid example of that. Some of the hardest working people we have in Vermont are our loggers. They harvest logs and ship them up to Canada. And they will be paying a tariff when that log goes up. When it is milled and returned as lumber that can be used in home building, there will be a 25-percent tariff on that as that lumber returns. Who is going to pay for that--the home builder or the home buyer?
That is what is going to happen. How in the world is this going to lead to the
These tariffs, No. 1, are the authority of Congress, if we exercise our authority. They are not the authority of the Executive, and Congress should stand up for itself and assert its authority and protect the constitutional promise of the separation of powers because we know that the concentration of power leads to the abuse of power. And, by the way, that is exactly what is happening right now.
Secondly, let's not be deluded by a fantasy economic theory that is at the core of this. It just makes no sense. It has no credibility. It has no intellectual foundation. Who knows how President Trump came to believe in this so much that he asserts it?
But, third, if we look at what is the impact on the people we represent--the people who build homes, the people who farm our fields, the people who tap maple syrup, the people who run health clinics, the people who run food banks--and we ask them: Hey, how is this going to affect you? Will it help? Will it hurt? And when every single one of those people we represent, who are doing the hard work, day in and day out, say: Peter, this is a disaster--and we are going to vote for it? No way.
Thank you, Senator Kaine.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my colleagues because I am so concerned about the damaging impact of President Trump's tariff taxes. I call them taxes because that is what they really are, but those tariffs, particularly on Canada, although we heard today that he announced a number of others.
I have been hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire. But on Monday, I visited a bakery in Derry, NH, that may have to go out of business due to what President Trump is proposing on tariffs on Canada.
The owner of Chatila's Bakery moved to the United States 36 years ago. He was a cardiologist and his brother a Ph.D. scientist. They are from Lebanon. He became a citizen, raised his family, and sent his daughter to college. He and his brother got interested in sugar-free desserts and candies because their mother was diabetic. So he spent the last 36 years building his business. And now he might have to sell his factory because of the trade war that President Trump has started with Canada.
Chatila's Bakery makes sugar-free desserts. They get some of their ingredients from Canada. All of those ingredients are now more expensive.
While I was there, he showed me a fuel bill he had just gotten that said that because of the tariffs, his fuel bill was going up.
But, more important than that, 85 percent of his business comes from exporting to Canadian customers. Most of his sales contracts in Canada were canceled after these tariffs went into effect last month, so he says he is going to lose between $400,000 and $500,000 this year in the business.
Now, President Trump says he is worried about trade imbalances and that he wants to support exporters. Well, here is an American small business and an exporter, and because of what this President is doing with his reckless trade war, this small business owner might go out of business.
Mr. Chatila said to me:
I asked him what he would like to ask President Trump if he had the opportunity, and his question was to the President:
I think that said it about as well as anybody I have heard. We know, sadly, that his business is not the only one. Many of our small businesses in New Hampshire are reliant on travel and tourism.
I have heard from business across our State about Canadian tourists canceling plans already, about bookings that they rely on that are not going to come through. Last week, we saw that airline tickets from travelers coming from Canada this summer are down more than 70 percent from this time last year. That represents lost business for my constituents and for businesses and communities across this country. All of this will put their businesses at risk, and it will do so when they are also facing higher costs for inputs because of these tariff taxes.
Two weeks ago, I visited a bus company that runs buslines between the seacoast of New Hampshire and Boston and New York. They are facing $500,000 in added costs because of these tariffs. Now, on top of that, he stands to lose business because fewer people are visiting the United States. He also goes between the seacoast and Logan Airport--all of that because the President has damaged the relationship we have with one of our closest allies.
It doesn't make sense to me. What is the logic of antagonizing those allies and partners whom we rely on?
Lest anyone forget, the President is claiming that the flow of fentanyl from Canada justifies all this. Well, fentanyl and other drugs are serious issues, and I have spent much of my time in the Senate doing what I can to help stop those drugs from entering the United States and to getting help for those who need it. Just last month, the Senate passed the HALT Fentanyl Act, which is legislation I cosponsored, along with a lot of my colleagues, which would permanently schedule fentanyl-related substances.
Imposing tariffs against Canada is not the way to fight fentanyl and other drugs. This kind of legislation, like the HALT Fentanyl Act, is something that is going to have much more of an impact. CBP statistics show that all of the fentanyl seized along the northern border from the beginning of 2022 until now is 71 pounds. Now, that is a lot of fentanyl, and that could kill a lot of people, so I don't endorse that by any means, but when you compare that with the 67,966 pounds that have been seized along the U.S.-Mexico border for the same period of time, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on where most of this fentanyl is coming from?
Instead of imposing tariffs, we should be working cooperatively with our allies and partners, and Canada has taken a number of steps to crack down and to stop drugs from coming into the United States.
The tariffs in place before today are likely to raise costs by nearly $2,000 for the average household. That is money many families in New Hampshire and across this country can't afford to pay when they are trying to cover the costs of groceries, of housing, of childcare, of energy--all of those things that President Trump, when he was running for President, said he was going to address.
I have heard from many New Hampshire families about how these tariffs will raise prices for keeping their homes warm, for putting gas in their cars. Now the Trump administration has reportedly fired the entire staff of the LIHEAP program that helps families and seniors heat their homes when they can't afford to pay.
The message to the American people from this administration is increasingly clear: They do not care about you and what your needs are. So voting for Senator Kaine's resolution presents an opportunity for Congress to help Americans who are worried about higher costs. I intend to vote for this resolution to end the tariffs on Canada, to lower costs for Americans, and to help our small businesses. I hope all of my colleagues will do the same.
I just want to add that, in the last hour, President Trump announced a new tax of 10 percent on everything Americans import, with far higher taxes on many countries. Everything from the EU will now face a 20- percent tax--Japan and South Korea, 25 percent. I mean, again, the rationale for why we are going after our allies and partners makes no sense.
This is a tremendous tax increase on American businesses and families. It is likely the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history. This new Trump tariff tax will add at least another $3,000 to the costs for an average household.
Again, this President promised he was going to lower costs for families. This does nothing to do that. He is taxing all of the goods that people buy every day. What he doesn't tell you is that the reason he is doing this is so that he can give more money to provide tax cuts for the top 1 percent of
I don't think this tax increase is going to help the small business owner I visited on Monday or the families in my State and across this country who are trying to afford groceries. I intend to vote to end those tariffs on Canada today when I have the opportunity. I hope my colleagues will join me.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues who are in support of Senator Kaine's, I think, thoughtful approach on how we can put an end to this tariff war with Canada.
I have got to tell you that one of the things about working with Tim Kaine for 40 years is he always keeps a hugely optimistic view of things. Boy, do I need a dose of Tim Kaine optimism today because we have seen in our national security domain a reckless disregard for classified information and no one, so far, held accountable. What a message that sends to our allies and to the men and women who work in our military or in our intelligence. If they did the same behavior with the so-called Signalgate, they would be fired.
I need Tim Kaine optimism today because the long-awaited Republican budget resolution adds $6 trillion to the deficit--$4 trillion in funny math and about another $2 trillion for tax cuts. That then brings us to not my words but to Peter Navarro's words, whom I happened to meet with on a Sunday, who said that these groups of tariffs will add $6 trillion in revenues.
Who do you think is going to pay for that? Candidly, it is going to be the people who buy the Presiding Officer's cars at those great dealerships in Ohio. It is going to be folks in Virginia. We had one of our brewers in yesterday who has already laid off 20 percent of his staff because he imports malted pilsner from Canada.
What we are seeing with Trump is not ``America First.'' What it is going to be is ``America Alone.'' I say to anybody--and I spend way too much time in a SCIF, I know--but ``America Alone'' is not an America that is safer.
Then the notion or idea that we have picked on our longest best friend in many ways--I am a little biased; my mom's parents were from Canada. But the notion that this President is trying to turn Canada into an enemy is beyond belief. You know, I talked with the senior Canadian leader just the other day.
He said: Mark, you know, even if, tomorrow, Trump says, ``Never mind,'' as he has gone back and forth a dozen times, or says, ``No harm, no foul,'' the damage we will have done to the relationship between America and Canada will take years to recover from.
Senator Shaheen just mentioned airplane flights are down 75 percent. America's national anthem is booed at hockey games. We had another person in who ships whiskey--Virginia bourbon--up to Canada. If all the tariffs are off tomorrow, which they will not be, it will be years, if ever, that Canadians will be buying American bourbon.
So, in dreamland, $6 trillion of tariffs, you know, is the largest tax increase in American history. I believe it actually goes beyond World War I.
Of the so-called ``Liberation Day,'' the only thing that is liberating is this administration liberating Americans from their savings because the market is down. They are liberating businesses from their supply chains because of so much disruption. They are liberating consumers from their hard-earned money because this is going to translate into increased costs.
This isn't partisan. This isn't Democrat-Republican. This is math. And no matter how much the President wants to strut on the South Lawn-- and I am glad to see at least the South Lawn was being used for an announcement today as opposed to another day of a Tesla show lot--who is going to bear the brunt of this? It is going to be Americans. It is going to be Canadians. It is going to be the people around the world.
I am sure my friend has already mentioned this: Particularly from Virginia's standpoint, Canada is our second biggest trading partner. Virginia's businesses export approximately $3.3 billion worth of products to Canada. We import about $3.2 billion. Virginia's farmers sell about $430 million of goods to Canada. A lot of Virginia peanuts go to Canada. They are not going to be going. That is going to hurt our economy. As a matter of fact, in Virginia, 280,000 jobs in Virginia depend on trade and investment with Canada.
I know, as Governor, I went--and I know, Senator Kaine, as Governor, you went--because Canada is one of our best partners. What would the reception be tomorrow if we showed up in Ottawa?
This is not going to be just another economic policy. This is at the lifeblood of the Canadian economy, and combined with the so-called reciprocal tariffs around the world, it is the lifeblood of the American economy.
I know Senator Van Hollen is going to say a lot of the same things that I was going to say.
I would just say to the Presiding Officer again: I know he sells great cars, but I am not sure if even folks in Ohio are going to be able to afford $2,000 or $5,000 more per car just because of ill-suited tariffs.
So I would hope that folks on both sides of the aisle will actually stand up to ``America First.'' Reject this misguided tariff strategy. Reject this demonization of Canada. Recognize that ``America First'' doesn't have to be ``America Alone.''
The only thing that could make my day actually better at this point, beyond that little dose of Kaine optimism, is if the Senate finally comes to its senses tonight and endorses Tim's resolution, and we put an end to this misguided economic policy.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. President, I want to start by thanking our colleagues from Virginia, starting with Senator Kaine, who brought us to this debate here on the Senate floor today on a very important question, and to my other colleague from across the Potomac River from Maryland, Senator Warner. We sometimes disagree on various issues. On this, we have solidarity across the Potomac River. That unity comes from a very simple result, which is that we are here to sound the alarm about the trade war that Donald Trump just unleashed today.
He calls it ``Liberation Day.'' If he had made this announcement yesterday, on April Fools' Day, people would have thought it was an April Fools' joke. But this is no joke, and it is not liberation day. It is a national sales tax day because that will be the result of the President's action--a sales tax on the American people, a national sales tax, because today the President announced he was levying massive, across-the-board tariffs on countless goods, making big promises but at the end of the day betraying the American people, who are going to be hit hard by rising prices.
We have heard the President make a lot of promises about what these tariffs will do. It is like a miracle cure. They are going to revive American manufacturing. They are going to stop fentanyl. They are going to balance our budget. They are going to make all of us rich, and all of those other countries are going to pay for it. The problem is, none of that is true. Other countries don't pay these tariffs; we do. It is a sales tax on goods imported from other countries. American importers pay the tax at the border, and they pass the cost on to the consumers. What else are they supposed to do?
American manufacturers that put together products here in the United States but import some of the parts they use in those products will face higher costs, higher prices on the parts they import. They are going to have to pass on those costs to American consumers, so they are going to have to jack up their prices.
When they jack up their prices, not only do American consumers pay more, but those American manufacturers and American producers, when they are exporting goods overseas, they are having to export at higher prices, and that makes their products less competitive overseas.
On top of that, it is a double whammy because when you have these big tariff increases on products from other countries, other countries aren't just going to sit back and take it. They are going to respond. They are going to retaliate. They are going to put tariffs on American products that we export to their countries.
What will happen then? That means that an American producer exporting
It is going to hurt the economy back home in both those ways.
We saw a little miniversion of this during the first Trump administration. Back then, Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese products, and China responded with retaliatory tariffs on many American farm exports like wheat, soybeans, and pork. What happened? Well, American farmers sold less of those products overseas. They got more expensive.
Do you know how we know this was all a big fake-out? When American farmers were not able to sell their products into China's market because of China's retaliatory tariffs, we bailed them out--we the American taxpayer. We spent $23 billion in taxpayer money from the American people to pay American farmers not to be more productive--they were productive--but because China raised tariffs on their products in retaliation for Donald Trump raising tariffs on theirs.
Look, we all recognize that tariffs can be an effective tool when they are used in a targeted way with strategic industries, but that is not what Donald Trump is doing. This is not strategic. He is starting an all-out trade war and apparently does not care about the consequences.
It is leading already to chaos in the markets. I am not going to go through all those because Senator Warner, Senator Kaine, and others have spoken to that. But at the end of the day, the direction we are heading could well take us into a recession.
As Senator Warner mentioned, some of the President's people have said this is going to be $6 trillion worth of tariffs over the next 10 years--by far the largest effective tax hike in American history.
Economists estimate that it will cost the typical American household up to $4,200 more per year. That is a whopping sales tax.
The National Association of Home Builders says that tariffs will make new homes cost up to 10,000 more, at a time when we are already facing an affordable housing crisis.
North America's Building Trades Unions sent a letter opposing these tariffs, saying:
A researcher at Cornell University said that a new car could cost up to $20,000 more because of all the back-and-forth across borders and all the additional tariffs that are applied each time a border is crossed. U.S.-made cars are estimated to increase by up to $3,000.
So buying a house, buying a car--these are all things that families save toward. So what this comes down to is a tax on the American dream.
These increased costs may not mean a lot to the billionaires in the President's Cabinet. After all, we had the Secretary of Commerce say recently with respect to Social Security benefits that, hey, if Americans didn't get their Social Security benefits one week, nobody would notice except the fraudsters. That is the kind of attitude we have from this administration when it comes to increasing prices that we will all experience as a result of these tariffs. They think people won't notice, but they will.
Finally, I do want to talk to the other part of this issue--and I am not going to belabor the point because others have spoken to it eloquently, especially the chief sponsor of this effort, Senator Kaine--which is that President Trump is abusing the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to apply these tariffs to Canada.
That is a law aimed at protecting our national security. It is a law that we have used against adversaries like Iran, Sudan, North Korea, and Russia. But here, President Trump is using it to target our longtime friend, our longtime ally Canada. He has declared a phony ``emergency'' on our northern border to target our friends there.
He claims that these punitive tariffs will somehow address the fentanyl crisis. Of course, we should be addressing the fentanyl crisis in the United States of America, and this Congress has done a lot. It needs to do a lot more. But in the fight against fentanyl, the Canadian people are, No. 1, our allies, and No. 2, they are not the ones who are causing the problem. Only 0.2 percent of fentanyl trafficked into the United States comes across the U.S.-Canadian border, and Canada is right now putting together a $1.3 billion plan to strengthen that border security and stop it altogether.
So this is a fake emergency declared by the President, putting on these massive tariffs. I will close with why, and we are going to find out more about this in the next couple of days.
I heard the chairman of the Finance Committee speaking a little bit earlier about how the proceeds from collecting tariffs might be counted and used to offset tax cuts which are going to be aimed at the very, very wealthy in this country--tax relief for the wealthy paid for in part by a national sales tax on all the other Americans in the country; paid for, as we have heard, by going after Medicaid.
So whether it is a national sales tax or other efforts aimed at the American people that will hurt the American people and hit them in the pocketbooks, that is all done in service to pay for tax cuts for the very wealthy, people like Elon Musk.
So I want to say thank you to the Senator from Virginia, Senator Kaine, for blowing the whistle on this phony action taken at our friend Canada, all as a pretext to increase tariffs, which amounts to a huge sales tax on the American people in service of a tax cut for the very wealthy.
I thank my colleagues.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am honored to follow my colleague from Maryland, who has described so well the reasons we should oppose these tariffs.
I thank my colleague from Virginia, Senator Kaine, who has demonstrated once again his leadership that makes him such a great Member of this body.
I want to begin--and I hope the Presiding Officer will forgive me-- with a four-letter word. It is a word that I say to my children that they should never use: ``dumb,'' D-U-M-B.
These tariffs are dumb. They are also cruel, and they are stupid. They are imposed in the name of, perhaps, building manufacturing in this country, which they won't do, or in the name of raising revenue to cut taxes for the wealthy, which is adding insult to injury, or simply for vengeance. So much of what this administration does is for the purpose of vengeance and vanity.
Careless, cruel, reckless--that is what these tariffs are, particularly as directed to Canada.
Let's be clear. The tariffs proposed by President Trump are a tax. They are a tax. There has been no tariff ever imposed in the history of the United States of America that has ever lowered prices. These tariffs will raise prices. They threaten not only higher costs for everything from gas, to groceries, to rental housing, but they also deeply threaten a recession.
I have been reading a book called ``Freedom from Fear,'' written by a great historian, a professor at Yale named David Kennedy. ``Freedom from Fear'' is about the events and the misdirection and mistakes that led our Nation to the Great Depression.
What began as a recession, what started as a Wall Street problem, became a global depression because the world failed to realize that, even then, our economies were connected and that tariffs could hurt all countries when all countries adopted them, when a trade war ensued. And a trade war now is what we face.
Canada has long been one of our Nation's closest allies and trading partners. We have a bond with Canada that goes beyond simple economics, although, frankly, our relationship with Canada supports millions of jobs, protects the competitiveness of American businesses, and ensures our long-term economic prosperity.
Our countries have countless trade and investment agreements, and cross-border projects such as communications, highways, bridges, and pipelines
And we share a border. But the border is a symbol of a bond that our people have in common, a friendship that goes deep, a heritage and a culture that we respect. These bonds will be betrayed by a reckless trade policy the administration is pursuing that threatens to derail that valuable--in fact, precious--partnership.
These tariffs are going to hurt all Americans. We have with Canada one of the most comprehensive and important trading relationships. I can go into the numbers. In 2024, Canada was the United States' second largest trading partner, with $761.2 billion in total trade--the largest single U.S. export market for goods. Every day, nearly half a million people and billions of dollars in goods and services cross that border.
But I want to focus on Connecticut for the moment because Connecticut demonstrates what will happen to America as a whole, and I represent the people of Connecticut. This regimen of tariffs will be catastrophic for Connecticut. Friends in Connecticut, listen to what these haphazard tariffs will do. Canada is Connecticut's single largest trading partner, accounting for 20 percent of our total trade in 2024, including 13 percent of our exports and 25 percent of our imports.
Consumers in Connecticut already face some of the highest electricity prices in the Nation, with an average cost of 28.16 cents per kilowatt- hour, compared to the national average of 16.26 cents per kilowatt- hour. Connecticut and New England as a whole get a significant share of our electricity from cheaper Eastern Canadian hydropower. The 10- percent tariffs proposed on energy resources from Canada will directly impact and drastically increase those electricity costs. ISO New England has estimated that this tax would add $66 million in annual consumer costs.
I hope President Trump will listen to the people of Connecticut and New England when it comes to electricity costs. Do not impose these tariffs.
The harm to Connecticut is far from limited to just energy prices. Some of the largest State industries--including aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing, medical devices--all rely on trade with Canada to remain profitable. These industries source key production imports from Canada, including aerospace parts, critical minerals and metals, basic chemicals, and petroleum and coal products. In return, we export billions of dollars of goods to Canada.
We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people across Connecticut--jobs, employment--who all stand to see their livelihoods threatened if this tax is allowed.
It will ripple across Connecticut. It will reverberate through the country to the Presiding Officer's State, to Virginia, New York, Maryland, colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
The cost of living in Connecticut will rise drastically. We already have one of the highest costs of living in the country. Taxing these goods will put an undue financial strain on individuals and families across Connecticut but, most important, on people who can least afford a higher tax--our middle-income and lower income members of the workforce, working people in Connecticut who have to buy stuff depending on their paychecks--for groceries, for gasoline. A tax on those products will hit them in the pocketbook. It will hit their families. It will hit them at the kitchen table, when they go to the drugstore to buy pharmaceuticals, when they have downpayments on homes, on furnishings--across the board.
So I am not here to make a speech; I am really here to make a plea: Mr. President, please reconsider. These tariffs are fundamentally misguided. They are dumb. They are cruel, reckless, and careless. They play fast and loose with America's credibility around the world.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes on S.J. Res. 37 and join us in trying to save the American economy and our credibility around the world.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. President, I thank my friend from Connecticut for his excellent words. Much of what he said could be applied to New York.
I want to thank Senator Kaine for his seeing around the curve, seeing how important this was months ago and persisting and persisting and persisting in getting us to this place.
Now, Mr. President, President Trump just announced his new tariff package a few hours ago, and it is even worse than we thought. In addition to the tariffs that he has already imposed, he now has a 10- percent across-the-board tariff on all products.
What is this going to do to American families? It is going to clobber them. It is estimated that the Trump tariff will add about $5,000 to the average family's costs. And why is he doing it? To reduce taxes on the billionaires. They have said that. Navarro and he have said it over and over again, that they want to reduce those taxes. It is outrageous. It is outrageous.
The average family, sitting at the kitchen table on Friday night, is saying to themselves: Whoa, boy. We had better cut back on our purchases. Maybe we ought to not go out to the restaurant. Maybe we ought not take that vacation we have been saving up for for a year. Maybe we ought not to buy that new car.
Consumer confidence is lower than it has been in many, many years. The average business, because of the chaotic nature--Trump says one thing one day and another thing the next day--are holding back. Businesses, small and large, need certainty, but there is no certainty here with the chaos Donald Trump has created.
Listen to this. When told that it would raise the costs on the American family, Trump himself said he ``couldn't care less'' if prices go up. What kind of bubble is he living in?
These billionaires who are running the country--Trump, Musk, Lutnick--they are in such a bubble, they don't know how the average family is hurting. Yeah, they are billionaires. God bless them. They made a lot of money. But don't think that average people are in the same boat.
The cost of groceries, the cost of prescription drugs, the cost of gasoline, the cost of buying a car, the cost of buying a house, the cost of furniture, the cost of clothing--everything people buy--is going to go up.
Donald Trump said he would reduce prices on day one when he got elected. He is doing just the opposite with these tariffs. He is raising prices through the roof and strangling American families.
My colleague in Connecticut alluded to Smoot-Hawley. The new Smoot- Hawley is Trump-Musk.
These taxes could create a global trade war. Our allies--previous allies--are aligned together at how they are going to get back at Trump and what he has done to the country.
This is not ``Liberation Day,'' as Trump called it. This has made a few-weeks-earlier, in effect, tax day--huge taxes through tariffs on American families. It is a gut punch. It is a gut punch to the average American.
So right now, I know Donald Trump is pressuring Senate Republicans to vote this resolution down. He is treating this like a loyalty test. But my plea to my Senate Republican colleagues: Stand with the American people. You know how bad this is. A few of you have already said you can't vote for this. Please don't be intimidated by Donald Trump, who said he couldn't care less if prices go up on your constituents, my Republican colleagues. Don't listen to him.
This is a disaster--a disaster for working families, a disaster for the Nation's economy, a disaster for our alliances and relationships around the world--all doing so much to hurt America for one darn reason: cutting taxes for the billionaires.
This is a government by the billionaires. Everything they do--whether it is this budget they came out with today or this tariff bill--is in obeisance to the very few wealthy people who seem to control the Republican Party and want another tax cut.
I urge everybody to vote against these horrible, horrible tariffs. Tariffs on Canada have very little to do with fentanyl; we know that. Tariffs on Canada and all the other countries he has now added to the list have everything to do with more tax breaks for billionaires.
I strongly, strongly urge a ``yes'' vote. This is worse than what we had thought. He made it worse when he announced what he was doing a few hours ago.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I thank Senator Kaine for his leadership on this issue.
President Trump's new tariffs are not ``Liberation Day''; they are ``Obliteration Day.'' They are going to be remembered as something that raised taxes on every American consumer, had foreign countries then attack businesses all across our Nation, all without a plan from President Trump to have an end game.
President Trump is just making this up, and we are going to have to wait to see how he responds when Europe attacks us, when Canada attacks us, when Asian countries now attack us. He is inviting an attack upon the American economy even as American consumers have to pay higher taxes.
So we are just at the dawn of the equivalent of an all-out war--trade war--with every other country in the world. And who is going to pay the price? American workers and American taxpayers. They are the ones who are going to pay the price.
Mr. President, I rise tonight to speak about the outrageous calls we have been hearing to impeach Federal judges who have ruled against Donald Trump. That is right. Donald Trump and his extremist MAGA supporters think that if a Federal judge dares to rule against the President, that judge should be impeached.
Recently, Trump tweeted that Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal district court here in Washington, DC, should be impeached because he ruled against Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador without any due process.
Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has been on the losing side of several recent judicial decisions, has referred to Federal judges as ``evil'' and called for ``a wave of judicial impeachments.''
In the other body, MAGA extremists have taken up the cudgel and filed Articles of Impeachment against Federal judges who have ruled against the President, and then they receive political contributions from Elon Musk for doing so.
Just last week, Speaker Johnson even suggested eliminating entire Federal courts because their judges have dared to rule against Donald Trump. These calls for the impeachment of judges and elimination of courts are just the latest in salvos in a broad attack on the courts, on lawyers, on the rule of law by the President and by his allies.
I come to the Senate floor today to condemn this dangerous and un- American onslaught against the judiciary and legal profession and urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to speak out against it. Federal judges confirmed by the Senate and given life terms under the Constitution during good behavior are not like contestants on ``The Apprentice.'' You don't get to fire them because you don't like the way they are doing their job.
The President and his acolytes don't seem to understand this. With each call to impeach judges, they disregard and disrespect the Constitution; its separation of powers; its checks and balances; and its establishment of three coequal branches of government--one of which is a judiciary whose principal job, as the Supreme Court explained more than 200 years ago in Marbury v. Madison is to ``say what the law is''--to say what is constitutional--and that is precisely what the courts have been doing.
Since retaking office, Donald Trump has issued a series of Executive orders that are blatantly, patently, and obviously unconstitutional and illegal. Trump's arrogant belief that he can supersede the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress with an Executive order has spawned more than 100 lawsuits against his administration.
Federal judges across the country, judges appointed by Democrat and Republican Presidents alike, including Donald Trump himself, are doing the same job that judges have done in our country for centuries. They are interpreting statutes, making legal determinations, and upholding the Constitution of the United States.
They are moving swiftly to hear cases and, for now, preventing some of the most egregiously unlawful Trump policies from taking effect: revoking birthright citizenship, blocked; freezing all Federal funding, blocked; pulling down public health websites, blocked; capping funding for critical health research at the National Institutes of Health, blocked; denying gender-affirming healthcare to transgender youth, blocked; allowing Musk unbridled access to Social Security data, blocked; clawing back funds appropriated by Congress and obligated to my National Climate Bank, blocked by a Federal district court judge. And the list goes on and on and on--blocked, blocked, blocked, blocked.
In these cases, like any others, if the losing party disagrees with the judge's decision on what the law is, they can appeal it. What they shouldn't do is to call for the extraordinary step of impeaching the presiding judge. That is a remedy the Constitution reserves for only grave ethical or criminal misconduct.
That is why John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States, was compelled to issue a rare public statement after President Trump called for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg.
Without referring to the President directly, the Chief Justice nonetheless rebuked him, explaining that ``for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement'' and ``the normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.''
Unfortunately, the MAGA extremists calling for impeachment of judges or the elimination of the courts don't care about this, the Constitution, centuries of judicial norms, the rule of law. They only care about one thing: fealty to Donald Trump.
The baseless calls for Chief Judge Boasberg's impeachment confirm that. This is a judge who was a Yale Law School graduate, who cut his teeth as a successful homicide prosecutor, who was first appointed to the bench by a Republican President more than 20 years ago, who was confirmed to the Federal bench in a 96-to-0 vote, and who was named by Chief Justice Roberts to a seat on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court where he served a 7-year term, including as the court's presiding judge.
Yet this is the judge, widely respected throughout the judiciary and legal profession, who President Trump calls a ``radical left lunatic, a troublemaker, and an agitator.'' That is Trump talking about Judge Boasberg just because he ruled against the administration in a preliminary decision, which by the way, a three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld on review.
So while Trump's ad hominem attack on Judge Boasberg was typically baseless, it and other attacks like it leveled against other judges are no less dangerous. They have given rise to increased threats against judges--a ``significant uptick'' as Chief Justice Roberts put in his report on the Federal judiciary at the end of last year.
Indeed, according to the Chief Justice, U.S. Marshals Service data showed a tripling of hostile threats and communications directed at judges over the previous decade.
Recently, judges have also experienced the swatting of their homes, the delivery of pizzas to their homes--actions intended to send a message: We know where you and your family live, where your children are. So reach the result which we want. Be afraid, be very afraid.
This is wrong. Very wrong. It is dangerous. It is intended to pressure judges in their decision-making that puts lives at risk. It deserves the strongest possible across-the-board condemnation by all Senators and all Americans.
Instead, my Republican colleagues have been awfully quiet, fearful of upsetting President Trump, who has followed the ``Godfather,'' part 1, playbook and made them an offer they can't refuse--a primary opponent if they just don't go along.
Finally, I have a few words about Donald Trump's unprecedented Executive orders targeting law firms and individual lawyers who have litigated against him. These orders have suspended security clearances, canceled
Trump has even directed the Department of Justice to seek sanctions against attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits or engage in vexatious litigation against him.
So with Donald Trump coming after lawyers and law firms, it is gut- check time for law firms in our country, especially the big law firms that the President has targeted for revenge and retribution because of their lawyers daring to do their jobs and representing clients in cases against him.
I commend those firms like WilmerHale, like Jenner & Block, who are standing up, who are fighting back. And we need all law firms to stand up to this administration and to continue to stand up for the rule of law. And those that don't, especially those that seek to appease and accommodate the President out of fear their bottom line will suffer-- grave risk, grave harm to our liberties will, in fact, depend upon the lawyers who take difficult and unpopular cases, often against the government, and zealously represent their clients in those matters.
I will conclude with this: The attacks on our judiciary, the calls for the impeachment of judges, and the attempts to intimidate and retaliate against lawyers who dare to stand in defense of the Constitution are not just an assault on individuals, they are an assault on the very foundations of our democracy.
The courts are not pawns in a political game. The rule of law is not up for negotiation. If we allow this dangerous precedent to take root, if we tolerate threats against judges and lawyers fulfilling their constitutional duties, we set the stage for the erosion of the checks and balances that have safeguarded our Nation for over two centuries.
This is not about protecting one man. This is about protecting the principles that ensure justice and fairness for all Americans. It is time all of us as a nation to rise above partisan interests and defend what makes us strong; our commitment to the Constitution, to the independence of the judiciary, and to the rule of law. I urge my colleagues--all of my colleagues--and every American to stand with me in defending these sacred institutions, not for our political health but for the health of our democracy itself.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I am here in support of Senator Kaine's effort to get this body to take a public view on President Trump's mad declaration that we have a border emergency with Canada happening right now.
I can tell you that if I go home to Rhode Island and ask people what the emergency is in their lives, I wouldn't get one person who said: Oh, we have got a real emergency with Canada. They are a huge threat. That whole Canada situation, boy, that is dangerous.
This is nutty stuff, and it is dangerous stuff economically. Just in Rhode Island, Canada is our largest international trading partner. Twenty-two percent of Rhode Island's exports are to Canada, and we import from Canada as well. And when the tariffs get reciprocated by our Canadian friends after this ridiculous behavior from President Trump, then that is going to affect all Rhode Islanders.
We buy a lot of energy, for instance, from Canada, and that is going to raise costs for Rhode Island families. It is a direct hit to people's pocketbooks. And as has been pointed out, this is just a shady way to hit Americans in the pocketbook, to raise revenue so that this phony-baloney budget resolution we are about to have to deal with can open up revenues that they can then use as a justification for lowering taxes for the billionaires and the big corporations who already pay way too little in taxes.
Some billionaires pay no income taxes at all. The corporate share of America's revenue has gone from about 30 percent of America's revenue down to single digits. That is just a huge sucking sound pulling out of America's revenue the revenue of the corporate entities, and it is not the mom-and-pop flower store. It is the huge multinational that goes and pretends that it is doing its business in Ireland or the Cayman Islands or someplace and hides profits.
This is a tax racket against the American people that is now being propped up and made worse by a tariff racket against the American people. And the excuse is one of the dumbest ones ever: that the emergency is fentanyl.
Well, Rhode Island was at the heart of the opioid epidemic. That is why I worked with Senator Portman to pass the CARA bill, the biggest addiction recovery response bill this body has ever passed. I take this issue deadly seriously--not the President. Not the President.
Mr. President, 0.2 percent of the fentanyl in America comes across the enormous Canadian border. If you did it like per mile of the American border, it would be immeasurably small. And over this fake excuse that there is a huge fentanyl problem, 0.2 percent, they are going to dump enormous new expenses on American families.
People have called this a sales tax, and it kind of is because what it does is it raises prices. It raises prices because the money that the Federal Government takes in has to be recovered, and it gets recovered from families, from people who are paying higher prices for imported goods or higher prices for the domestic freeloaders who are going to raise their prices to match the imported goods just the way the fossil fuel industry raised their prices to match the foreign prices of fuel after the Ukraine invasion and so gorged themselves that they made the biggest profits off the American people in the history of corporations.
It was the biggest gouge ever by the scoundrels of the fossil fuel industry, and now we are opening the door for this to happen across all industries.
American families are going to be hurt, and they are going to be hurt hard. And it just puts revenues on the books that the Republicans can then use to go and do what they really want to do here, which is to make sure that all their billionaire cronies, everybody who is surrounding Trump, all the pals in the Cabinet, and all the ones who write the big checks to the super-PACs and who fund Republican politicians don't have to pay taxes anymore.
It is ``Leona Helmsley Day'' here in the Senate. Taxes are just for the little people. This is a disgrace, and I hope there will be a few voices on the Republican side to recognize that considering the Canadian border to be an emergency is preposterous.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. President, I rise to bring the attention of this body to a broken promise by our President. Our President promised, in the campaign and recently in an address to all of us here in Congress, to make America affordable again; to deal with the high prices of groceries, of fruits and vegetables, of housing, of housing supplies, of energy--to deal with high prices. Millions of Americans who voted for President Trump said they did so out of frustration about high prices.
Well, today, President Trump has announced he is going to impose tariffs on virtually every trading partner we have, and I rise in support of a piece of legislation we are about to vote on here in the Senate that gives us the chance to do something.
So to my colleagues, if you have heard, as I have, from your constituents, calling with concern and alarm about how much prices have not gone down but have gone up, I recommend you think about one country, one of our most trusted and loyal allies--some of the nicest people on the planet. Who doesn't like Canadians?
Canadians have served alongside us in virtually every war we have ever fought. They are a NATO ally and partner, and for my small-but- mighty State of Delaware, our major export destination and the nation from which we import the most.
And yet, because of an emergency at our border, which I think is wholly unjustified by the data of how little fentanyl actually comes into our country across the northern border, President Trump is moving ahead with slapping tariffs on Canada.
Tonight, you have a chance, I say to my colleagues, to vote to undo the declaration of an emergency on our northern border. You can vote to undo the
This is not ``Liberation Day'' but ``Tax Day''--a new national sales tax that will harm the imports we buy from virtually every country and, because of the countervailing tariffs, harm our exports.
A tariff is a tax, and tonight we will take a vote. And I hope some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will join Senator Kaine and many of us in recognizing it is ludicrous to use the special emergency powers that Congress gave to the President assuming he would only do so in a case of war or active open hostility, not in the case of one of our trusted and loyal partners and allies, the great and kind people of Canada.
In recent meetings with Canadian leaders, they have said: Don't make us do it. Don't make us impose tariffs on you.
But, tonight, the Trump administration has imposed tariffs on dozens and dozens of our trading partners.
To my friends and colleagues, let's vote to undo this phony crisis and vote to undo the tariffs on U.S.-Canada trade.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
MR. CRAPO. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to the resolution. Senator Kaine and his fellow cosponsors want a strong trade relationship with Canada. So do I.
I consider, like President Reagan, Canadians to be not just ``friends and neighbors and allies . . . [but] kin, who together [with us] have built the most productive relationship between any two countries in the world today.''
By the way, I would note that the tariffs that President Trump announced today did not get applied to Canada. What we are talking about here today, however, in Senator Kaine's resolution is not about our trading relationship. It is about the emergency stemming from fentanyl and illegal immigration.
Senator Kaine and the other cosponsors are challenging the ``how,'' meaning the means of what President Trump is doing, the threat of tariffs through which President Trump addresses a national emergency.
The Senate, however, is set up to vote on this proposal today on the ``why''--whether an emergency exists.
Under President Biden's watch, the number of people arrested on the northern border rose more than tenfold from 2022 to 2024. Indeed, publications like the Economist and the New York Times, documented here, showed extensively how the northern border has become increasingly insecure over the last year, with a massive spike in the number of migrant crossings. Just look at the spike on the chart. This is the New York Times reporting.
And what do they say?
Indeed, we have a crisis at the northern border. It is a fentanyl crisis and a migration crisis. In considering these figures, I want to emphasize, I don't blame Canada. I blame President Biden.
President Biden repeatedly refused to prioritize border security. Indeed, when President Biden's nominee for the Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection came through the Finance Committee, I asked him if he would at least admit that there was a border emergency, including on the southern border as well as the northern border. He, like President Biden himself, refused to take it seriously, with dire consequences for our communities in America.
When President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau met last year, the Biden administration's top priorities included encouraging both countries to increase climate spending and advance diversity and inclusion. But when it came to common priorities that Americans actually wanted to see progress on, like combatting illegal immigration, President Biden's view was that we should both--Canada and the United States--expand pathways to allow more migrants into the country and to promote Canada accepting 15,000 migrants.
President Trump is right to change this trajectory, precisely because Canadians also are victims of illegal immigration and fentanyl. We must both prioritize these threats to our citizens.
To sum it up, when my colleagues and I meet constituents who suffered at the hands of criminal elements which crossed illegally into the United States or from smuggled fentanyl, we do not consider them to be any more or less a victim depending on which border their harm illegally crossed.
We say the most important thing is that this crisis must stop. Under President Trump, it is stopping.
Accordingly, I encourage my colleagues to vote no on the resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. President, I rise for some concluding comments. I believe the vote will follow. I want to acknowledge my colleague from Idaho's comments about the northern border.
This is a bill that is fundamentally about tariffs. I acknowledge what my colleague said, that there are issues at the northern border, and I have colleagues who have shared that, and there are mechanisms for working out those issues.
And I would ask my colleagues if you are concerned about any issue on the northern border, do you think we will more likely be able to deal with it if we work hand in hand with Canada, or do you think the path to success is punitive actions against Canada?
I would argue plainly that the right way to deal with any issue at the border with Canada is to work with Canada, not wage a trade war against them.
This vote, though, is fundamentally about tariffs--the President's imposition of tariffs against Canada that will be a costly tax increase on American families.
If the President has concerns about trade issues with Canada, guess what: This President negotiated a signature trade deal, the USMCA, that got 89 bipartisan votes in this Chamber, and he has a negotiating process to find a resolution to any issue he cares about. The imposition of tariffs does nothing more than put a tax on American families.
What I would like to do--I did speak earlier today. But what I would like to do is just read quickly from many stakeholders who have weighed in, in support of S.J. Res. 37.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce:
North American Building Trades:
We shouldn't circumvent this agreement.
Sheet Metal Workers:
National Retail Federation:
U.S. Conference of Mayors:
The AFL-CIO:
The International Association of Machinists:
The National Taxpayers Union:
The Taxpayer Protection Alliance:
United Steelworkers:
And, finally, Advancing American Freedom, the think tank formed by former Vice President Mike Pence:
We have a chance to stand strong for our businesses and consumers, our foresters and farmers, our national defense industry and shipbuilders, against cost increases that will hurt people's pocketbooks, hurt American competitiveness, and hurt our national security.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes on S.J. Res. 37.
I will yield back all time on the resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time was yielded back.
Under the previous order, the clerk will read the title of the joint resolution a third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) would have voted ``nay.''
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 48, as follows:
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 37) was passed as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, with respect to S.J. Res. 37, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
