Exclusive / Why the Senate won’t vote to repeal new Canada tariffs - Semafor
President Donald Trump’s new Canada tariffs are infuriating Democrats and annoying some Republicans — but Congress is unlikely to vote on them before the election.
Trump’s use of a nearly century-old law to impose the levies takes away individual senators’ ability to force such a vote on the Senate floor like they did with the previous set of Canada tariffs, which were imposed under a different statute, noted Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. And that means Republican committee chairmen and leaders control any effort to curtail them — not rank-and-file Democrats.
“The other tariff statutes don’t have this privileged motion that a single senator can force a vote on the floor,” Kaine said.
He added that tariff opponents can write bills to block the tariffs, but under Republicans, “they get sent to a committee” and “the committee bottles it up.” Instead, Democrats are eyeing pre-election Iran war votes.
Just last year, individual senators used their powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to vote to block earlier Canada tariffs, but there’s no such option this time around. It’s no secret that Democrats would like to see Republicans have to take as many tough votes as possible right up until the election, although it’s also possible some GOP incumbents would vote against the tariffs given the option, knowing full well that Trump would veto any effort to undercut his tariff power.
Democrats are still on track to force votes to restrain Trump’s war powers on Iran, having teed up a resolution written by Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., Kaine said. Those votes are increasingly challenging for some GOP senators as the war drags on.
“We’re trying to do one every week. Sometimes the schedule makes it hard, but our goal is to do one every week until war’s over,” Kaine said.
Democrats are surprisingly bullish on succeeding with their Iran war votes; they’d need five Republicans to vote with them if Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., continues to break with his party in order to get enough GOP support to get a simple majority. But there are scheduling battles playing out behind the scenes.
The Senate is still working on the bipartisan college sports bill for the foreseeable future, and Republicans want to hold votes on regulatory rollbacks in exchange for another vote on the Iran war. There’s likely to be some horse-trading to get those votes over the next two weeks.
