TERRY SCHILLING: Why Are Senate RINOs Still Protecting China’s Dirty Practices?

President Trump has declared Liberation Day, launching a bold new round of tariffs to restore American industry, confront the Chinese Communist Party, and put an end to decades of globalist betrayal. This is exactly the kind of leadership conservatives spent years demanding: unapologetic, pro-worker, and rooted in the simple truth that a strong nation makes what it needs.

But while the base is energized and the American people are ready to rebuild, a group of Senate Republicans is already trying to stop him.

We saw this so many times in Trump’s first term, where Republicans in Congress who campaigned on the America First agenda turned on him as soon as he actually tried to enact it. This time, less than a week after Liberation Day, some Senate Republicans were already backing legislation to strip President Trump of the authority to impose tariffs.

This is absurd. You can’t say that you support the President, then turn on him on his signature issue. At the very moment he’s using that authority to fight back against foreign cheating and economic dependency, these senators want to hand power back to the same institutions that sold out this country.

This is what RINO politics looks like; deference to Wall Street over Main Street. It’s reflexive globalism over American sovereignty. And it’s exactly why millions of working- and middle-class voters no longer trust the Republican establishment.

There are a million examples of this since President Trump came on the scene: Republicans that vote like Democrats, who defend a system that hollowed out the middle class and handed our future to Beijing. They never supported Trump’s agenda because it disrupted the old order. He didn’t cater to the Chamber of Commerce. He didn’t take policy cues from Harvard economists or multinational CEOs. He listened to American workers. And he delivered.

Trump’s first term’s economic policies sparked a manufacturing revival in the very places that had been left for dead. For the first time in decades, jobs were returning, factories were expanding, and the grip of foreign supply chains began to loosen.

Now he’s going further with Liberation Day, cutting off our dependence on countries that hate us, and punishing those that have gamed the system for decades. Instead of opposing these efforts, Members of Congress should be working with the President to ensure lasting victories in the trade war, fixing this broken system for good.

No country has abused the system more than China. And one of their biggest advantages is something our own government refuses to acknowledge: pollution as a trade weapon.

By ignoring basic environmental safeguards, China slashes costs and floods our markets with artificially cheap goods. President Trump has rightly called these countries “filthy pollution havens” because they turn environmental destruction into economic power. While American businesses comply with costly environmental rules, Chinese factories belch out toxic waste and get rewarded with access to our markets.

If we’re going to take this seriously, we need more than just reciprocal tariffs. We need structural, lasting reforms. One of the most important steps Congress can take is passing the Foreign Pollution Fee Act.

This legislation would impose a fee on imports from high-polluting countries like China, holding them accountable for their environmental abuses and protecting American manufacturers from being undercut by dirty, subsidized production.

It would restore fairness to global markets, give U.S. industry a real chance to compete, and ensure that environmental responsibility is rewarded—not penalized.

And perhaps most importantly, it would lock in the gains of Trump’s trade agenda, making them harder to undo by Congress or a future administration. We’ve seen how quickly the establishment will want to roll back tariffs. A permanent legislative solution like the Foreign Pollution Fee creates a durable foundation for economic nationalism—one that survives beyond a single presidency.

This is the kind of trade policy we should have had all along. Strong. Targeted. Strategic. And rooted in the understanding that economic power is national power.

It’s also the clearest possible test for the Republican Party. Are we the party of American workers, or the party of multinational corporations? Do we believe in rebuilding this country, or in defending the system that sent our jobs to Shanghai and called it “growth”?

Even the harshest critics of tariffs admit that environmental dumping by countries like China is real, persistent, and economically distorting. Ignoring it rewards pollution, punishes responsibility, and rigs the system against the very workers our trade policy should protect. It would be an incredible gambit to both prove Trump correct and force our spineless leaders in Congress to admit that he’s right.

Trump has made his choice. He’s leading the fight to restore American strength. The base is behind him. The momentum is real.

The RINOs trying to stop him are siding with China, not America. They’re siding with Wall Street, not the communities they were elected to represent. And they will be remembered for it.

Terry Schilling is the president of the American Principles Project.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.