This week, warning signs flashed that Donald Trump’s tariffs were beginning to destabilise what appeared to be a solid economy at the beginning of his term. However, in Congress, Republican leaders pulled out all stops to protect his signature trade policy.
The threat appeared in the form of a Senate resolution sponsored by Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Ron Wyden, which appeared to have seen shots passing through a room where Republican majority had little inclined to resist the president before. But even before the first vote was voted, Trump and his allies moved to make sure it didn’t go anywhere.
First, the White House issued a veto threat to the resolution. This would have abolished the national emergency, which was declared at the beginning of the month to impose a 10% tariff on imports, and for a short time, it would have imposed even higher taxes on many trading partners. The GOP-controlled House of Representatives has since enacted rules to prevent consideration of Senate resolutions until at least the end of September.
When the resolution voted in the Senate on Wednesday, Paul, a conservative who is leaning towards libertarians, explained that it was necessary for Congress to regain what he had given to the president, appealing Republicans to get inside the ship.
“The founders would not have expected the Senate, the Senate, to be the novel use of the laws traditionally used to sanction the enemy’s tax system.
All Democrats in attendance voted for the bill, but only Alaska moderate Republicans Lisa Murkovsky and Maine Susan Collins listened to Paul, with 49 votes stuck in both for and against. Shortly afterwards, Vice President JD Vance appeared at the Capitol and smashed the tie of a procedural move that confirmed the resolution was dead forever.
Trump moved to have a similar fate falling on other attempts to permeate his tariffs through the Senate. He threatened to reject both a bipartisan bill that sets a 60-day deadline for Congress to approve the new tariffs, and a resolution blocking tariffs in Canada.
This week’s vote came on a release of data showing that the US economy contracted in the first three months of the year, spurring its first contraction since 2022 and the resulting imports urged by unrest over the new president’s trade policy.
“The main culprits are definitely Donald Trump and his pointless global tariffs,” Wyden said on the Senate floor. “If this continues to be our tariff policy, all the major economists and predictors are, unfortunately, predicting the recession, unemployment and misery that was on our entire newsfeed this morning.”
If Republican Mitch McConnell was present who opposed tariffs, then the vote could have been successful if Democrat Sheldon White House and Republican Mitch McConnell were present. But Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, told reporters Thursday that the situation was a “way of winning either way, either way.”
“We’ve already forced them to vote for tariffs several times, and we might try to do that again in the future,” Schumer added that he expects a policy to emerge to negotiate future legislation that is expected to approve Trump’s tax and immigration policies while cutting social safety net programs.
“The Republicans own it. They cared so much about the tariffs. They had to bring in the JD Vance and tear the 50-49 tie.
Better economic news arrived on Friday, when government data showed that government data employed more people than expected in April. Earlier this week, Trump’s House Speaker and avid advocate Mike Johnson, who had acknowledged the “rocky start” of tariff policies, described them as rewarding gambling.
“Even now, and even today, people are beginning to see the dust settle on it. They understand that there is a master strategy behind this, and they see the outcome,” Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday. “Because of what President Trump did, 100 countries will become 100.
Johnson asked why he deployed Congressional tactics to prevent consideration of the Senate’s attempt to cancel Trump’s tariffs.
