Barista prepares a coffee drink. (Photo by Nazar Abbas via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON – Five Republican U.S. senators joined Democrats on Tuesday to end President Donald Trump’s national emergency that has triggered high tariffs on Brazilian goods.
The vote came ahead of an significant Supreme Court case that could decide whether many of the president’s tariffs violate the Constitution.
Sense. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, as well as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, supported the joint resolution in 52-48 vote.
The adoption of this measure by the Senate means a departure from Art previous effort in April, when Senate Republicans blocked a resolution to end Trump’s emergency tariffs on Canada. Murkowski, Collins and Paul also supported the measure.
The resolution is unlikely to come to a vote in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which means it likely won’t become law.
Coffee canister in the Senate
Senate Democrats forced Tuesday’s vote just days after filing an amicus brief appeals to the Supreme Court declare Trump’s unprecedented tariffs, implemented under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, unconstitutional. Murkowski was the only Republican to join the briefing.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, spoke on the floor before the vote with a container of Maxwell House coffee next to him.
Kaine said Trump’s tariffs on Brazilian goods constitute “an abuse of presidential power that people experience every time they walk down an aisle at the grocery store to buy coffee for their family or ground beef for their families.”
“No president, Democrat or Republican, should be able to declare a national emergency to justify imposing 50% tariffs because their friend is being prosecuted for breaking the law in another country,” he said.
Kaine took advantage of a decades-old law that allows a minority party to force a vote to end a national emergency.
Trump declared a national emergency and on July 30 imposed a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports accusing government of Brazil for the “political persecution” of its former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro plotting coup to stay in power in 2022
“No taxation without representation”
Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who co-sponsored Kaine’s bill, said on the floor before the vote that Trump was using his emergency powers “to tax us without our consent.”
“I, for one, still believe in the principle of no taxation without representation, and I will vote to end this invented emergency and abolish these unconstitutional import taxes,” Paul said.
The vote to reverse Trump’s tariffs on Brazilian products was the first of three bipartisan resolutions this week protesting the administration’s emergency tariffs.
Kentucky’s senior senator and former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said: “Tariffs make it more expensive to both build and buy in America.”
“The economic damage of trade wars is not the exception in history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week I will vote for resolutions to end emergency tariffs,” McConnell said, referring to Trump’s decision to to add another 10% duty on Canadian goods. This came after the province of Ontario aired an anti-tariff ad that included words from President Ronald Reagan.
Trump’s tariffs on defense
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, criticized the joint resolution as “counterproductive to the progress President Trump has already made.”
“The president’s historic trade negotiations are bearing fruit. President Trump has already announced new agreements, trade agreements with major trading partners, including most recently Cambodia and Malaysia. Other such announcements may be yet to come. I urge other trading partners to enter into similar trade agreements,” Crapo, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said on the floor before the vote.
Both tariffs and climate change are responsible for the recent rise in coffee prices, reports Los Angeles Times.
