Five Senate Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues to end President Donald Trump’s emergency powers underpinning his Brazil tariffs on Tuesday over the objections of Vice President JD Vance, who urged his fellow Republicans to back the president’s trade agenda.
Senators voted 52 to 48 on the resolution to block the president’s Brazil tariffs with every Democratic lawmaker voting in support of the measure. The resolution is one of three measures introduced by a handful of Senate Democrats and Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul seeking to terminate the president’s tariffs on Brazil and Canada, as well as his 10% global tariffs levied on many U.S. trading partners.
Senate Democrats and Paul are expected to force votes on toppling the Canada and universal tariffs later this week. The trio of resolutions require just a simple majority vote to pass, meaning just a handful of Republican “yes” votes are needed to overturn some of Trump’s tariff agenda.
The votes, however, are largely symbolic since House Speaker Mike Johnson is not expected to take up the resolutions.
“Brazil had a trade surplus, and the impetus behind it appears to be a disagreement with a judicial proceeding,” Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, one of five Republicans who supported the resolution, told reporters on Tuesday. “I just don’t think that’s a strong basis for using the trade lever.”
When asked if the president was overstepping his authority to implement the tariffs, Tillis said, “I don’t think there’s a rational basis for it.”
Paul, a vocal supporter of free trade, declared that Trump’s tariffs were “unconstitutional” on Tuesday and argued the national emergency declaration to impose tariffs on Brazil was “contrived.”
“The Senate is compelled to act because one person in our country wishes to raise taxes without the approval of the Senate, without the approval of the House, without the approval of the Constitution,” Paul said on the Senate floor prior to the vote.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also crossed party lines to terminate Trump’s Brazil tariffs.
Vance implored Senate Republicans to vote against the resolutions seeking to block the president’s tariffs on Brazil, Canada and other countries.
“The point that I made to my Republican colleagues, recognizing there’s a diversity of opinions about it, is that the tariffs give us the ability to put American workers first,” Vance told reporters after meeting with Senate Republicans for a lunch meeting on Tuesday. “They force American industry to reinvest in the United States of America instead of a foreign country. They’re also incredible leverage for the president of the United States in negotiating these trade deals overseas.”
“If you look at what we’re doing in Asia, if you look at all of the trade deals, the trade barriers that have been dropped by foreign countries on American consumers, they are happening because the president United States has been willing to use tariffs to give American workers and American farmers a better deal,” Vance continued. “To vote against that is to strip that incredible leverage for the president of the United States. I think it’s a huge mistake, and I know most of the people in there agree with me.”
The Trump administration imposed an additional 40% tariff on Brazilian products in July, bringing the total tariff rate on Brazil to 50%. Trump justified his national emergency declaration by arguing several of the country’s policies and recent criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro poses an economic and national security threat to the United States.
“Recently, members of the Government of Brazil have taken unprecedented actions to tyrannically and arbitrarily coerce U.S. companies to censor political speech, deplatform users, turn over sensitive U.S. user data, or change their content moderation policies on pain of extraordinary fines, criminal prosecution, asset freezes, or complete exclusion from the Brazilian market,” the President’s July Executive Order states in part.
Senate Democrats excoriated the president’s Brazil tariffs in a predictable move.
“We got a surplus with Brazil. They buy a lot more American stuff than we buy theirs, and that’s including even with how much Brazilian coffee we buy, we still earn a surplus with Brazil,” Democratic Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine told reporters on Tuesday. “So, it makes no sense to impose tariffs on Brazil, and it’s just being done to back a president’s friend, much in the same way as the president giving $20 billion to Argentina to help out a friend and their president.”
Caden Olson contributed to this report.
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