[Pages S2121-S2137]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

TERMINATING THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED TO IMPOSE DUTIES ON
ARTICLES IMPORTED FROM CANADA

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Committee on
Finance is discharged from further consideration of S.J. Res. 37, which
the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

A joint resolution (S.J. Res. 37) terminating the national
emergency declared to impose duties on articles imported from
Canada.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there is now 6 hours
of debate, equally divided, on the joint resolution.
The Senator from Kentucky.

S.J. Res. 37

Mr. PAUL. ``Taxation without representation is tyranny,'' bellowed
James Otis in the days and weeks and years leading up to the American
Revolution.
This became the rallying cry of American patriots: No taxation
without representation. The American Patriots thought that a distant
Parliament in England where they had no representation had no right to
tax them.
This was the rallying cry: ``No taxation without representation.''
Our Founding Fathers believed so strongly in this, they embodied it
in our Constitution. Our Constitution doesn't allow any one man or
woman to raise taxes. It must be the body of Congress.
Now, this wasn't new. This was part of maybe a thousand-year
tradition from Magna Carta on. In Magna Carta, it is stated:

No taxation without the common counsel of the realm.

Even at that time they were chafing at one man, the King, determining
the taxes for the land.
One hundred years before our Revolutionary War, in the English Civil
War, there was a debate over parliamentary supremacy versus supremacy
of the King. They did not want to pay taxes that weren't approved by
the Parliament.
In 1683, the New York Charter on Liberties, the beginning charter for
the colony of New York stated:

No taxation without representation.

And after this English Civil War, the English Bill of Rights
embodied: No taxation without the consent of Parliament. This principle
was longstanding. It was nonnegotiable. This was what sparked the
Revolution. And, yet, today we are here before the Senate because one
person in our country wishes to raise taxes.
Well, this is contrary to everything our country was founded upon.
One person is not allowed to raise taxes. The Constitution forbids it.
The Constitution was so concerned with the power of taxes--which some
have said the power of taxes is the power to destroy--but our Founding
Fathers were so concerned with this, that they said: No, the President
will not have the power to legislate. The President will not have the
power to tax. Only Congress will be able to tax the people and only by
originating tax bills in the House.
It was that specific. They were so mortified. They were so worried by
having a monarchy. They were so worried about having all the power
gravitate to the Executive, that they said: We must split the power.
They based a lot of their thinking on Montesquieu. Montesquieu wrote
in the 1740s--40, 50 years before our Constitution. Montesquieu wrote
that when the legislative and executive powers are united in one, there
can be no liberty. This is something that our Founding Fathers took to
heart. They said: We must separate the powers. We must, at all cost,
limit the power of the Presidency.
This isn't about political party. I voted for and supported President
Trump, but I don't support the rule of one person. We are set--the
President is set--to have a 25-percent tax on goods coming from Canada
and Mexico. This is a tax--plain and simple--on the American people.
But one person can't do that. Our Founding Fathers said: No, that
would be illegal for one person to raise taxes. It has to come to
Congress. It has to originate in the House. This has gone on for 200-
and-some-odd years.
You can't simply declare an emergency and say: Well, the
constitutional Republic was great, but, gosh, we have got an emergency.
The times are dire.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly said: There are no exemptions for
emergency.
There was no exemption for a pandemic. There was no exemption for
emergencies. The taxation clause stands.
It is an important part of the Constitution: Taxes must originate in
the House. They must be voted on in Congress. No one man can raise
taxes on the people.
They are set to do this through a process in which an emergency has
been declared. But realize this: One person declares an emergency, the
President. And even if we are successful, which I think we will be
successful here today--a majority will vote to say: This is wrong-
headed, and the emergency should end. It would have to go to the House.
But even if we were successful in the House, the President would veto
it. It would take a two-thirds vote in order to stop an emergency. That
is such a burden that we need to consider reforming the emergency
powers and reversing this.
I think a President can have times that there are emergencies and the
President can declare an emergency. But it should last 30 day, at most.
At the end of 30 days, the emergency would be brought to the people's
House--the House of Representatives and the Senate--and we would vote
to affirm or uphold the emergency.
Right now, the pretense of this emergency is fentanyl. I don't
discount fentanyl. I know families who have lost kids to fentanyl. But
there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than
there is from Canada going into the United States.
There is no emergency. The Canadians have actually been cooperative
with us and said they will try to do even more. The problem isn't in
Canada.
Even if the problem is valid, even if that is something that we all
agree on,

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you can't have a country ruled by emergency. You can't have a country
without a separation of powers, without checks and balances.
Madison put it this way. Madison said that we would pit ambition
against ambition; that all men--and, frankly, all women--are motivated
by self-interest and the self-accumulation or aggrandizement of power;
and so we would limit their power by pitting ambition against ambition.
We would give some of the power to the House, some to the Senate, and
some to the President. There would be checks and balances in a jostling
of power, but we would check and balance each other.
Part of the problem we face today with this emergency, though, is
that Congress has abdicated their power--not just recently, not just
for this President. This is a bipartisan problem. I am a Republican. I
am a supporter of Donald Trump. But this is a bipartisan problem.
I don't care if the President is a Republican or a Democrat. I don't
want to live under emergency rule. I don't want to live where my
representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on
power.
One person can make a mistake. And guess what: Tariffs are a terrible
mistake. They don't work. They will lead to higher prices. They are a
tax, and they have historically been bad for our economy.
But even if this were something that was magic, and there was going
to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I wouldn't want to live
under emergency rule. I would want to live in a constitutional republic
where there are checks and balances against the excesses of both sides,
right or left.
If one person rules, that person could make a horrible mistake.
On things so important as war, it is the same thing. We don't want a
President just to go to war because a President might get angry with
some country or have a vendetta. We are supposed to vote. That is why
there is a declaration of war. War originates also in Congress.
But we have lost so many of these things and so much of this. It is
Congress's fault for giving it. Over the last 70 years, there are
probably a dozen pieces of legislation where Congress said to the
President: Here, take this power. Create emergencies. Put on tariffs.
Negotiate for us because we are too feeble-minded to do it ourselves.
But the thing is, the Constitution doesn't let us give our power
away. There is something called the nondelegation clause, and it says
that we are not allowed to give power away. We can't just say: Here,
Mr. President, take it.
In this particular case, it is even worse. The rule of law--IEEPA is
the acronym for it--has never been used for tariffs before and doesn't
mention the word tariff.
So this isn't something that was targeted in times of need: The
President can have the power to put on tariffs. It never says that.
This will be an extraordinary use of something never intended to be a
way to have--unilateral--one single person invoke a tax on the people.
With regard to tariffs, let's be very clear. Tariffs are simply
taxes. Tariffs don't punish foreign governments. They punish American
families. When we tax imports, we raise the price of everything from
groceries to smartphones, to washing machines, to prescription drugs.
Every dollar collected in tariff revenue comes straight out of the
pockets of American consumers.
Conservatives used to understand that tariffs are taxes on the
American people. Conservatives used to be uniformly opposed to raising
taxes because we wanted the private marketplace, the private
individuals to keep more of their incomes. So we were always for lower
taxes. And yet now the mantra that is coming is: We want higher taxes.
What happened? Did we, all of a sudden, give up all of the things we
used to believe in as conservatives?
I, for one, haven't. I still think more taxes is bad for the economy.
More money taken out of the productive sector, the private sector,
given to the government is a mistake.
To those who still call themselves conservatives but now support
tariffs, let me remind them that Milton Friedman said tariffs ``raise
prices to consumers and waste our resources.''
To those who still have a fond memory of Ronald Reagan on my side,
Ronald Reagan said:

Protectionism costs consumers billions of dollars, damages
the overall economy, and destroys jobs.

Ronald Reagan's vision for America can be seen in our trading
relationships with Canada. In 1986, President Reagan said:

Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and
open markets. . . . I . . . recognize the inescapable
conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow
of world trade, the stronger the tides for human progress and
peace among nations.

And it is absolutely true. If you look at a chart or a graph of world
trade over the last 70 years, it has gone like this. We have been
trading more with each other. If you look at a world map of prosperity,
it is the same curve. It is a hockey stick. It is going up
exponentially.
If you look at a curve of poverty, 100,000 people are escaping
poverty every day around the world, and it is because of international
trade. Trade is good, not bad.
Think about it. If you buy something, you are trading. If you go to
the store and you buy a smartphone, and you give them $1,000, you want
that smartphone, and you don't lose. It doesn't matter where the money
went; you got your smartphone. You only give money to somebody for
something if you want it. If it is a voluntary trade, it is always
equal. Well, it is, actually, always mutually beneficial.
And so when people say: Oh, we have lost, and China is winning, and
China is winning, and we have a trade deficit with China--America
doesn't trade with China. An individual buys a product. You are the
trader.
When you go to Walmart and you buy something at Walmart, and you say,
``My goodness, I can get this TV for $200 less than I can get it if
there were only domestic TVs,'' you are the contractor. The U.S.
Government didn't buy the TV; you bought the TV, and you did it because
you saved $200. You are now $200 richer and can go somewhere. You can
buy gas to go on a trip somewhere.
If trade were bad, you wouldn't buy the TV. You made the decision;
the government didn't.
Our government doesn't trade with their government. Our individuals
buy products from their individuals. If it is a voluntary trade,
everyone benefits or the trade doesn't occur.
It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the United States and Canada
share the world's longest international land border and are
continuously at peace.
Canada is a great customer of ours. In fact, Canada buys more
American goods than China, Japan, England, and France combined. So do
we want the Canadians to buy less of our stuff or more of our stuff?
It is a crazy notion to put a 25-percent tariff on this enormous
amount of goods. There are predictions that cars are going to cost
$10,000 more because the cars go in and out. We have cars made in
Kentucky, but some of the parts go to Mexico. Some of the cars go to
Mexico. Some go to Canada. They come back--a $10,000 increase. Do you
love the idea of tariffs? Is it such a great word to pay $10,000 more
for a car?
Canada is also the leading provider of grain, livestock, meat, and
poultry. The United States imported $97 billion worth of oil and gas
from Canada last year. Canada is a major provider of cars, car parts,
steel, lumber, aluminum.
This amount of trading demonstrates that no American will be able to
avoid the high taxes, the high prices. They will be forced to pay
because of tariffs. The taxes on Canadian imports will come at a great
cost to American families. The taxes on Canadian imports will make the
cost of food, fuel, cars, and furniture more expensive.
The former conservatives that now sing a populist tune know deep down
that their advocacy of higher taxes will cause suffering for the
American family. The converts to this protectionist faith cannot help
but acknowledge that even they know that the tariffs will raise prices.
They admit it readily. The tariffs that they put on in 2019 are still
punishing the farmers in our country to such an extent that the farmers
are still asking for more subsidies.
When the Trump tariffs went on in 2018, 2019, the farmers immediately

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complained, and they were given $20 billion of taxpayer money. That is
an acknowledgment that the tariffs hurt farmers.
So we are going to do it again, and they are all lining up. People
say we are going to have to bail them out.
Are we going to have to bail out the car companies? Are we going to
bail out everybody that is going to be hurt by these tariffs?
It is not a good idea.
The administration is currently considering a bailout for farmers.
The idea that the American taxpayer will have to bail out an industry
to dull the pain of tariffs is not a novel one. We have seen this one.
We have seen this story.
What our parents told us when we were kids is still true today:
Actions speak louder than words. The supporters of tariffs know that
their policies impose suffering, and they are willing to spend your
money to alleviate that harm. So they know tariffs are going to hurt
farm exports. So they are going to take your money and give it to the
farmers.
Well, what kind of policy acknowledges: Hey, I have got a terrible
policy. I am going to hurt these people. We will just give them some of
your money.
It makes no sense at all.
In addition to the previous costs, the Peterson Institute estimates
that tariffs will cost the average family $1,200 a year. The Budget Lab
at Yale University estimates that tariffs will cost the average family
$4,200 a year. In fact, according to the analysis, tariffs could cost
the least fortunate families on average $2,400. The middle class will
likely pay higher costs of about $3,000. Tariffs are a cost. Taxes are
a cost. If you tax a good, it is added on to the cost. This is what
happens. It happens whether inflation is the tax or whether the tax is
a tariff. It adds to the cost of goods, and it will be passed on to the
consumer.

The average American family won't get the bailouts though. If you are
a special interest and the taxes hurt you, the tariffs hurt you, you
will get a bailout. But if you are just an average person working for
yourself, self-employed, and the tariffs cause all of your groceries to
go up and cause your electronics to go up, no one is going to help you;
you will just pay higher prices. If you think the cost of eggs is high,
just wait until the tariff hits.
Tariffs will raise the price of a car between $5,000 and $15,000.
Despite arguments to the contrary, Americans know that tariffs are a
tax they will have to pay. That is why vehicle sales jumped almost 13
percent last month--because people are trying to buy their cars before
the tariff gets on their car and raises the price. People are smarter
than politicians. That is nothing new.
It is not just cars that will be more expensive as a result of
tariffs; energy will be more expensive. Gas prices in some parts of the
country could see a 15- to 30-cent per-gallon increase in price.
According to the National Association of Home Builders, the building
of a single-family home could become up to $10,000 more expensive. Why?
Because we import lumber. We import steel. If we make it more expensive
to import lumber from Canada and steel from Canada, the price of your
house goes up.
Look, people already can't buy a house because interest rates are so
high. Young people are living in apartments. More and more, people feel
stuck in their life, and we are going to add to the price of lumber and
steel to make homes even harder to purchase? It is a terrible idea.
Washing machines were already almost $100 more expensive as a result
of the original tariffs 4 years ago.
Here is really bad news: Even beer will become more expensive. A
professor at Northeastern University states that a six-pack of Corona
could go up by 45 cents, but a small craft beer could be increased by
as much as $1 a pint.
The former and never-were conservatives who try to sell tariffs as
anything other than a tax cannot fool the American people, who know
that their purchasing power will be weakened with every new
protectionist measure unilaterally imposed by the White House.
None of these tax hikes are necessary. The populists argue that the
threat of tariffs is needed to force Canada to stop the flow of illicit
drugs. In fact, one of the social media posts today said there was
going to be a tariff on fentanyl. Really? You think the drug dealers
are going to pay a tariff on fentanyl? Fentanyl is not being tariffed.
That is some kind of mistaken notion. This isn't going to happen. As I
have stated, there is more fentanyl going from the United States into
Canada than there is coming from Canada to the United States.
It is not a real emergency. It is being used to place a tax on the
American people.
But already we have seen a response from Canada. In response to the
threat of tariffs, Canada announced a $1.3 billion plan dedicated to
border security, to up border security on fentanyl. Yet the tariffs are
still coming despite their help. They have also announced more tariffs
as well.
The threat of tariffs seems to have worked. We need not make Canada
and America go through this when they have already responded to our
request.
The chaos of one day the tariffs are on, one day they are off, the
next day there is a loophole for this industry or that industry, is
chaotic and is leading to turmoil in our markets.
A week ago, when the thought of tariffs came forward, the markets
plunged to historically low levels.
The tariffs on Canadian imports, the tariffs on Mexican imports, the
tariffs on European imports--the chaos it creates in the marketplace
makes it difficult to plan for businesses.
The interesting thing also about the tariffs is--some have said:
Well, you know, the people will see that we are standing up for them
with tariffs and we are for America first. Yet, when we put tariffs on
historically, it has been Republicans.
In 1890, McKinley put tariffs on. He was all for it. So there were
people lauding McKinley. In 1890, the big McKinley tariff goes on. Do
you know what happened in 1892? Out of 170 Republicans, they lost 100
seats because prices went up with tariffs.
Has this ever happened before? Yes. It happened in the 1840s when
they put on the ``Tariff of Abominations'' under John Quincy Adams. He
signed it. Once again, the ruling party lost seats.
When is the last time this happened in dramatic fashion? Well, if you
study history and you want to know when the Republicans went to their
lowest ebb in the entire history of our country, it came after the
Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the early 1930s. Hoover was President, a
Republican. Republicans controlled Congress. They passed this dramatic
tariff, which most historians and most economists now say prolonged the
Depression for 10 years and caused the worst part of the Depression to
actually be in 1937--7 years after the tariff and nearly 8 years after
the stock market crash.
Do you know what happened to the Republicans in 1932? The Democrats
won the Presidency, and they won the House. Do you know when
Republicans got back in charge after 1932? It was 1994 in the House and
in the eighties in the Senate. They went 50, 60 years into the desert
because tariffs were such a turmoil to the country that the country
rejected Republicans for nearly half a century.

The emergency declaration we are considering today is unprecedented.
By declaring an emergency, the President invoked the International
Emergency Economic Powers Act. They call it IEEPA, but it is an
acronym. Don't get me started about government acronyms. It is a law
that has been used to put sanctions on, like, Iran. That is what it was
intended for. But it was never intended for tariffs and ``tariffs''
doesn't appear in the law.
Using this bill to impose tariffs is attractive to a President. He
doesn't have to work with the messiness of democracy, the messiness of
Congress. But do you know what? That messiness is a check and a balance
on power. Unlike most of our trade laws that require several procedural
hurdles, IEEPA just says ``Declare an emergency,'' and it becomes very
hard for Congress to overturn this.
When the Trump administration first implemented tariffs on China, it
took 11 months before the tariffs could take effect. By using IEEPA,
the technique now, the tariffs have an almost immediate effect.

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We are not at war with Canada. I don't even think we have real
disagreements with Canada. They are an ally that buys more of our stuff
than almost any other country in the world.
Expediency is not the same as legality, though. As legal scholars
have pointed out, there is reason to believe that this bill--this
IEEPA, this emergency bill--does not authorize the President to impose
tariffs for at least two reasons.
First, despite broad powers conferred to the President by this act,
the plain, simple text does not mention the ability to impose a tax,
tariff, or duty. It runs counter to Congress's habit of clearly
referencing tariff authorities in other trade statutes. This may
explain why no previous President has attempted to use emergency powers
to impose tariffs.
Second, it is difficult to see how using this emergency power, this
IEEPA Act and a national emergency, to impose tariffs would comport
with something called the major questions doctrine. Under this
doctrine, the Supreme Court will reject claims of Executive authority
on issues of vast economic and political significance. It is hard to
imagine that a 25-percent tax on everything from Canada would not be
considered to be of vast economic significance.
Congress has not clearly empowered this administration. I think it is
hard to even argue that it is ambiguous. The power was never granted.
This question is ripe, and this power is ripe to be rejected by the
Supreme Court.
Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of imports from Canada are at
issue here. Clearly, this is a major economic question. Yet Congress
has not expressly delegated the authority to impose tariffs to the
President.
We need to return to constitutional government. We used to abide by
the ancient principle of ``no taxation without representation.''
One of the first acts enacted into the law was the Tariff Act of
1789, which sought to generate revenue by placing a 5-percent tax on
all imported goods and was signed into law, after passage by Congress,
by George Washington.
Alexander Hamilton's ``Report on Manufacturers'' is well known.
According to Professor Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College, every tariff
recommendation put forth in the report was adopted by Congress in 1792.
But simply voting on tariffs does not convert them into a good idea. It
could make them constitutional. It could make this legal if Congress
voted on it. It would still be economically a bad idea.
As we move forward in this debate, you will see that there are people
on both sides of the aisle who question really whether we should be
ruled by one person or whether the power should be separated. To me,
this is not a partisan question. Some will try to make it a partisan
question. To me, it makes no difference whether the President is
Republican or Democrat. This is about the distribution of power. This
is about the separation of power. This is about the admonition that
Montesquieu gave us that when the Executive power and the legislative
power are united in one person, there can be no liberty.
Our Founding Fathers all believed that. They so feared the power of
taxation that they gave it only to Congress. They so feared the power
of taxation that they gave it specifically to originate in the House
before it came to the Senate because the House was closer to the
people, with elections every 2 years.
This goes against the traditions of our country. I stand to speak
against these tariffs. I stand to speak against these emergencies. I
stand against the idea of skipping democracy, of skipping the
constitutional republic, of rejecting our founding principles, not
because I have any animus toward the President; I do this because I
love my country, and I want to see the division of power enabled such
that it protects us all from the amalgamation of power into one person
such that it can be abused.
Another name for ``emergency rule'' is ``martial law.'' Who would
want to live under one person? That is the thing we all object to. In
all the countries around the world that we object to is the idea that
they don't have democratic rule.
We should vote. This is a tax, plain and simple. Taxes should not be
enacted by one person.
So I will vote today to end the emergency. I will vote today to try
to reclaim the power of taxation, the power of the tariff to where the
Constitution designated it should properly be, and that is in Congress.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from Louisiana.

Russia

Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, I want to spend a few minutes first
talking about Russia.
To get respect, you have to act respectfully. To be taken seriously,
you have to act seriously. We know that. It is a matter of common
sense.
President Putin in Russia is not acting with respect toward the
United States of America or President Trump. President Putin is not
acting seriously.
I don't know a single fairminded person with an IQ above his age who
doesn't want peace in Ukraine. We all want to see peace in Ukraine.
President Zelenskyy wants to see peace in Ukraine. President Trump
wants to see peace in Ukraine. I thought President Putin did. I am
beginning to wonder.
President Trump, who is leading these negotiations, first asked for a
cease-fire. He said: For 30 days--maybe 45, 60 days--I am asking both
Russia and Ukraine to lay down their arms.
President Putin said: No, I won't agree to a blanket cease-fire, but
I will stop bombing infrastructure in Ukraine. He lied like he
breathed. He continued to destroy civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

Then President Trump said: OK. Let's try for a cease-fire in the
Black Sea.
That would benefit both Ukraine and Russia, both of which use the
Black Sea for maritime commerce. And, indeed, the world depends on a
lot of the grain that they both export.
So President Trump said: Let's try for a cease-fire in the Black Sea
and maritime security in the Black Sea.
President Zelenskyy said: ``Sure, I am with you,'' just like he said
previously, ``I agree to a ceasefire, Mr. President.''
President Putin said: I will agree to a cease-fire in the Black Sea,
but I want conditions. I want conditions.
And do you know what his conditions are?--to have the United States
of America remove the sanctions on the Russian economy.
Then, to make matters worse, President Putin said: Oh, by the way, I
have one other condition. I want to put the people of Ukraine and the
Government of Ukraine under the administration of the United Nations.
In other words, he wants the people of Ukraine to give up their
democratic form of government and be run by the United Nations.
Then, finally, President Putin said to President Trump: Oh, yes.
There is one other thing, too, before I will agree to a cease-fire in
the Black Sea or to a cease-fire generally.
``I don't want to just negotiate with you, President Trump,''
President Putin said.
He said: I want China to be part of the negotiations and India and
Brazil and South Africa--and get this; this will curdle your lunch--
North Korea.
Mama Gump said that stupid is as stupid does. President Putin is not
interested in peace. President Putin thinks President Trump took the
bullet train to Chump Town.
I mean, I can tell you how I look at this and, I think, how most
Americans look at this situation. I think to myself: You know, my mama
didn't raise a fool, and if she did, it was one of my brothers. I see
what Putin is doing. He is not serious here.
I would gently--no. I take that back. I would firmly suggest to
President Putin: If you want peace, stop treating President Trump and
the American people like a bunch of chumps. Stop it. If you want
respect, act respectfully. If you want to be taken seriously, act
seriously--because his conduct toward President Trump's hand of peace
has been despicable. It would gag a maggot.
(Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)

Tariffs

Now, Mr. President, on a separate subject, I want to talk about
Canada.
By the way, my colleague here today, Nick Ayers, is with me. Nick is
one of my colleagues in my Senate office, and I thank him for being
here today.
I want to talk for a moment about Canada. I want to make it clear: I
love

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Canada. I have visited Canada several times, many times. It is
breathtakingly beautiful, and the people of Canada are just terrific.
They are hard-working. They are very pleasant. They are fun-loving once
you get to know them.
The United States of America and Canada have been friends and allies
for decades. We are neighbors. We share a 5,525-mile border. I am proud
of that. We share history. We share values. We maintain longstanding
mutual security commitments. We are both members of NATO. Canada and
America are members of the binational North American Aerospace Defense
Command. You probably know that as NORAD.
It is more than just security commitments, though. It is more than
just business. We are friends, and I am proud of that. I remember, on
9/11--who will ever be able to forget 9/11--U.S. airspace was shut
down. The people of Canada stepped right up to the plate. They
immediately implemented Operation Yellow Ribbon. They opened their
airports. The Canadians opened their homes. The Canadians opened their
hearts to 33,000 Americans who were stranded.
There is a little town in Newfoundland called Gander. I remember
this, too, that Gander has 10,000 people, but they welcomed thousands
of American passengers. They fed them. They sheltered them. They
comforted our American citizens. They gave them a little bit of peace
at a scary time for America and the world. There was no hesitation by
the people of Canada. It was only humanity. I will never forget that.
I remember, after Hurricane Katrina, which hit my State, it destroyed
Southeast Louisiana--New Orleans, yes, but many other parts of my State
as well--and Mississippi. Canada was the very first country and the
people of Canada were the very first people to send disaster relief.
Their program was called Operation UNISON. Their military ships sailed
south to help us in Louisiana. They sent 1,000 people and a lot of
supplies. And do you know what? The good people of Canada did the same
thing when we had the horrible fires in California.
Here is my point: I don't want to be at war with Canada. I don't want
to have a trade war with Canada. I want us to continue to be friends. I
made this suggestion to the new Prime Minister of Canada the other day,
Prime Minister Carney. I am going to make it again, and I hope, this
time, he will take it more seriously. Remember, if you want to be taken
seriously, you have to act seriously. If you want respect, you have to
act respectfully.
Prime Minister Carney, you say that President Trump is not a fair
trader. I understand your point of view. I don't agree with you, but I
understand your point of view. You have got to stand up for your
people. Prime Minister Carney, if you believe in free trade, then here
is what you do. Make this offer today: Offer to go to zero tariffs in
Canada on American goods--no tariffs, none, zero, zilch, nada--and
challenge America to remove all of our tariffs on Canada so the people
of Canada can sell their goods to Americans without a tariff, and the
people of America can sell their goods to our friends in Canada without
a tariff--zero tariffs. Let Canadian businesses and American businesses
compete. Competition makes all of us better. That is one of the shared
values that we have with our friends in Canada. Let American businesses
and Canadian businesses go at it in a friendly, competitive way and may
the best price and the best product win. That is fair trade. That is
free trade.
If Prime Minister Carney wants fair trade and free trade, he will
make that offer. I don't speak for President Trump, but I will
certainly encourage President Trump to accept that offer, and I think
he will.
There is a way to stop this trade war. It is just to remove the
tariffs on both sides. Remember what Mama Gump said:

Stupid is as stupid does.

Let's don't be stupid. Let's don't have a trade war. Let's continue
to be friends. Let's get rid of these tariffs.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Unanimous Consent Agreement--Executive Calendar

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous
consent that confirmation of the Sauer and Dhillon nominations be at a
time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the
Democratic Leader, during Thursday's session of the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Fentanyl

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, just over 2 weeks ago, the Senate passed
the HALT Fentanyl Act with bipartisan support. As I said at the time,
this bill joins other efforts to combat the fentanyl crisis that is
taking so many lives in our country.
But now Democrats seem to want to take a step backward in that fight.
They want to end the emergency that President Trump declared that
addresses the flow of fentanyl across the northern border from Canada.
Fentanyl moves in a sophisticated supply chain. Precursor chemicals
are shipped from China to North America--landing in Mexico, Canada, and
the United States. Those chemicals are then used to produce fentanyl,
which is smuggled into the United States across borders or sent through
the mail.
Now, much of the fentanyl that comes into the United States comes
from the southern border from Mexico. And I am glad that President
Trump has taken swift action to secure the border with Mexico and
address the flow of drugs across that border.
But we would be wrong to view this as solely a southern border
problem. The reality is that fentanyl production is growing in Canada.
One 30-year veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police specializing
in transnational crime said:

Canada is a significant platform for transnational networks
and one of the most concerning threats for synthetic narcotic
production and exportation to our allies, including the U.S.

Canada's financial intelligence agency has identified about 100
organized crime groups involved in fentanyl production in the country.
That is four times--four times--as many as there were in 2022. Canadian
law enforcement has raided drug ``super labs''--sophisticated fentanyl
production facilities that may have links to the cartels.
For now, most fentanyl from Canada enters the United States in small
amounts--often through the mail. But as one cartel member told ``60
Minutes'' last month, cartels are already smuggling fentanyl across our
northern border.
So what will happen if we focus on fentanyl coming across the
southern border and from China but fail to address the northern border
component of this crisis? Will the cartels simply shift tactics and
expand their operations to the north? I think we can be confident the
answer to that question is yes.
We have already seen some illegal immigrants attempt that shift when
faced with stricter security measures at the southern border. And last
week, the FBI Director warned the House Intelligence Committee that our
enemies will adapt to security measures at the southern border by
shifting resources to the northern border.
If we are serious about ending the fentanyl crisis in America, we
need to address the entirety of the crisis. We are not going to solve
the problem by going after just part of it. Ending this emergency
declaration will tell the cartels that they should shift their focus to
the northern border.
So I urge my colleagues to oppose this resolution and ensure that
President Trump has the tools that he needs to combat the flow of
fentanyl from all directions.
This is the second resolution seeking to end an emergency that the
Senate has considered in the last few weeks. Last time, it was ending
the national energy emergency. Now it is ending an emergency related to
fentanyl.
The American people recognize that these are legitimate crises and
that they warrant an aggressive response. President Trump and
Republicans promised that we would unleash American energy and end the
lawlessness at our borders, and we intend to keep those promises.

[[Page S2126]]

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 959

Ms. ALSOBROOKS. Mr. President, I stand before you all today to seek
unanimous consent for S. 959, the Tariff Transparency Act, my bill that
will demand a nonpartisan study on this administration's tariffs and
how they will impact everyday Americans.
This administration came in the door saying they would lower costs
and ease burdens on American families. These tariffs would do the exact
opposite. The President readily admits that these tariffs will disrupt
the economy, but he claims two things: that there will only be a minor
disruption and says that they will cause a little bit of pain.
Maybe it will only be minor to those who are billionaires, but to
everyday Americans, to the people who go to work every day to provide
for their families--the families like the family I grew up in, a blue-
collar family, a father who is a car salesman and a mother who is a
receptionist--well, they can't afford any disruptions, and they cannot
afford any further pain.
They deserve instead to know the truth about the Trump tariffs on the
front end. They deserve to know exactly how the Trump tariffs will
affect their day-to-day lives. They deserve to understand how these
moves will change the price of groceries. They deserve to be told if
the Trump tariffs will make energy costs more expensive or if their
dream of owning a home or a car will be made more impossible. What they
don't deserve is to be subjected to this indiscriminate and chaotic
approach to this economy that is already not working for everyone.
If these tariffs do depress the economy and a recession comes, which
many, many economists are now predicting, it will not be the
billionaires who are affected the most. It will be American small
businesses that are burdened. It will be American consumers that are
harmed. At the end of the day, it will be the American people who are
footing the bill for the Trump tariffs.
When we talk about American people, let's be clear. This is the
middle class. These are working-class, hard-working people who will be
impacted.
Do you know what? This administration knows the truth. They know that
these tariffs will raise prices and spike inflation and harm American
businesses, but they want to hide it from the American people until it
is too late. This is absolutely unacceptable. It is, in fact, wrong.
The American people need someone to stand up for them, so I am here
today to stand up for them, to speak for middle-class families across
Maryland and across America, working people across the country, to
defend the Americans who are fighting to keep a roof over their heads
and food on their table and can't afford the chaos that is ensuing in
their lives.
I shouldn't be standing for them by myself. They are who we all
should be fighting for. They are the ones who sent us here to represent
them. They sent us here to make their lives easier. They should be on
our minds before any actions that we take in this Chamber.
So I ask unanimous consent that the Senate pass the Tariff
Transparency Act. I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance
be discharged from further consideration of S. 959 and the Senate
proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered
read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered
made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Lummis). Is there any objection?
Mr. CRAPO. Reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. The sponsors seek the International Trade Commission, or
ITC, to conduct a study under section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930.
The study would examine the domestic impact of President Trump's
tariffs on Canada and Mexico and of potential retaliatory measures.
Section 338 studies are resource-intensive endeavors for the ITC. The
chair of Finance is one of the individuals authorized to request such
studies and historically has done so sparingly to conserve precious few
ITC resources.
I fail to see why we should expend those resources when a number of
private groups are already developing economic models on the tariffs at
issue.
Furthermore, it bears emphasis that the tariffs are not redressing
economic issues but, rather, the Biden administration's failure to
secure the border from fentanyl and migration. Yes, tariffs have
economic costs, but they can be used as tools too.
The cost of President Biden allowing fentanyl and migrants to flood
into the United States is quite high. The proposed bill has no interest
in trying to quantify the impact of the Biden administration's failure.
Instead, it selectively targets only the new Trump administration for
trying to redress a serious public health and national security threat.
Accordingly, because the bill unnecessarily expends the ITC's
resources and is not balanced, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Maryland.
Ms. ALSOBROOKS. Madam President, in response to that, I say
respectfully that I think we have been presented a false choice. In
this moment, I think it is really important for us to be able to not
only respond to the fentanyl crisis that we have certainly seen in our
country--we have seen it in Maryland, and we have seen it all across
the country--but I think the urgency of the moment requires to some
extent that we are able to walk and chew gum.
We have to fight fentanyl, but we also have to respond to the
devastation and respond to the uncertainty and the pain that is created
by the tariffs that do directly attack the middle class.
All we are asking in this moment, if these tariffs are so harmless to
the American people, well, let's prove it. Allow the bipartisan group,
the International Trade Commission, to do the study and to give the
American people the benefit of information about how these tariffs will
impact their everyday lives, how it will affect the bottom line. Will
it, in fact, cause the cost of groceries to rise? Will it, in fact,
cause energy costs to increase? Will it, in fact, cause housing to
increase?
I think the American people deserve answers, and in this moment where
chaos is ensuing all around them, where they are losing their jobs,
where they are losing--many of them--the funding streams that help
seniors and children to eat, the very least we could do would be to
provide information to hard-working families, like the one I grew up
in, answers about how these tariffs will, in fact, affect them.
Again, I don't believe that we have to consider the false choice
about whether or not we protect our borders against fentanyl and also
whether or not we protect the American people.
The President has said this is liberation day. I want to know whom we
are liberating. Are we liberating the billionaires who benefit from
these tariffs that allow the tax cuts or are we really fighting for
middle-class people?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, to respond briefly, this entire day is
being spent almost entirely on attacking President Trump's tariffs.
This is another attack on them.
The bottom line is that the economic data that is being discussed is
being created, and the bottom line is that part of this day is to help
continue the effort to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States
and stop the flow of illegal migration into the United States that
should have been stopped by the previous administration.
I continue my objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

Unanimous Consent Request

Mr. PADILLA. Madam President, I have to agree. We have finally made
it to Donald Trump's promise and self-proclaimed liberation day. But
here is what I also observe: The stock market is down since the
beginning of the year. The cost of everything from groceries to housing
continues to rise. Americans' retirement funds have shrunk. The chances
of a recession are up.
That sure doesn't feel like a liberation to me.
I bring these examples up simply to highlight the hypocrisy of this
administration. Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to lower prices on
day one of his administration, but he has done

[[Page S2127]]

the exact opposite. His policies and his rhetoric are raising the cost
of living for hundreds of millions of Americans.
To make matters worse, he is simply lying about it. In fact, his top
trade adviser has gone on record promising Americans that we all must
just be confused and that the tariffs are really actually tax cuts.
This administration thinks so little of the American people that they
think that somehow we won't know the difference between whether our
personal wealth is growing or shrinking.
So let's be clear. A tariff is a tax on the American people--plain
and simple. Trump's tariffs equate to the biggest tax hike on Americans
in decades, because the way tariffs work is this: American companies
will have to pay more to import goods, and in turn, the American people
will have to pay more to buy those products.
Donald Trump knows this. It is not that he doesn't know; it is that
he doesn't care. And those aren't my words; they are his. Just this
past weekend, he was asked about the effects that his tariffs will have
on the price of cars, as one example. He said: ``I couldn't care less
if they raise prices.'' He followed it up by saying: ``I hope they
raise prices.'' Again, those aren't my words; those are words from
President Trump.
Well, colleagues, maybe the richest President in history doesn't care
when the cost of a new car or the cost of a new home or the cost of
groceries go up, but for the people that I represent in my home State
of California and the working-class neighborhoods like the one I grew
up in, this is not a game.
Here is what is most concerning to me: It seems like Republicans in
Congress simply want to double down on this agenda of making the
working class pay more in order to pass even more tax breaks for the
wealthiest Americans.
The latest number, as the proposals continue to evolve, is $5.3
trillion in tax breaks for the wealthy. It is clearly the No. 1
priority for Republicans. Well, to do that, to pay for that, working
families are just going to have to work harder?
These same Republicans who want to give the tax breaks to the wealthy
are also the ones supposedly concerned about our Nation's growing
deficit. They are trying to tell us that, well, we have to make cuts to
Medicaid or other important programs in the Federal Government. They
say we have to make cuts to nutrition assistance programs. They say we
have to make cuts to public education. They will go one further: They
are trying to eliminate the Department of Education.
I grant them this: If nothing else, the Republican Party's economic
plan has been consistent. They want to bleed the working class to
benefit the rich, and they are going to lie to our faces as they try to
do it. It is unacceptable.
Now, we know Republicans are already also considering any and every
accounting trick they can think of to fudge the numbers and hide the
real cost of the bill.
So my resolution would simply require that they be transparent with
the American people. It would require that any tariff used to offset
the tax cuts for the wealthy must be explicitly written into the text
of the Republican reconciliation bill.
If Republicans want to increase prices on hard-working Americans to
give handouts to billionaires, then own it.
You should not be allowed to hide behind President Trump as you do
it. Be transparent. Be honest. Put these price increases into the bill.
Tell the American people what you really stand for, because when
Americans wonder why their grocery bills and their energy bills and all
their other bills go up, they deserve to know why, and they deserve to
know who caused it.
And then we will see who is really on the side of the working class.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to
the consideration of my concurrent resolution, which is at the desk;
that the concurrent resolution be agreed to; and the motion to
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no
intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I said in
response to the last unanimous consent request that this was a day to
attack the President's tariffs, and this unanimous consent request
continues that trend. But, ironically, this one adds in an attack on
the tax bill that President Trump and we on the Republican side are
fighting to enact.
And, once again, we see the politics of fear playing out, saying to
Americans that you are going to have all kinds of dire things happen to
you so that we can cut taxes for the wealthy. This is a standard attack
that has been used for over a decade, and it is no truer today than it
has been.
The reality is--and I think most Americans are starting to understand
this--that the very tax bill that we put into place 10 years ago, which
gave us the strongest economy we have had in years; reduced the deficit
dramatically; helped us to create more jobs than we have historically
seen, particularly for lower income individuals; and made a capital
formation explosion in the United States, stopping all of those large
companies from moving their assets out of the United States and moving
their jobs out of the United States and made America once again the
place where capital is, where America is the place where people come
from the world to form capital.
If we do not extend that tax law, there will be a $4.3 trillion tax
hike. I am going to say that again: a $4.3 trillion tax increase on all
Americans. The average American household will see over $2,500 go up in
their tax bill. Madam President, $2.6 trillion of that tax will go to
people making less than $400,000 per year, and another 600,000 will go
to small businesses--tax hikes hitting small businesses.
What we are fighting to do is to reduce taxes, to keep them stable,
rather than letting them go up. That is what this battle is about.
So this unanimous consent request says we can't use revenue from
tariffs to offset the costs of saving and protecting those tax
increases.
The issue is whether there will be any tariffs in the reconciliation
bill, and that is not settled. We don't even know whether that will be
done.
But the rules of math have been settled. When someone pays an import
tariff, they have paid an amount that is deposited in the U.S. Treasury
and adds to the total of our Treasury funds; that is mathematical
truth. That basic arithmetic is settled and is consistent with how we
calculate and estimate America's revenue.
Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office's June 2024 report notes that
revenue from existing tariffs from 2024 to 2034 could total $872
billion. We can debate whether tariff rates should be higher or lower
to bring that total number up or down, but we cannot change the fact
that money entering the Treasury, pursuant to law, should be counted as
money entering the Treasury.
And to do it in the name of trying to stop tax increases, when what
we are doing is stopping the tax increases? Those fighting this are
trying to let that bill expire so that everybody in America's taxes can
go up, so that we can have more spending.
This is the old tax-and-spend debate with the spin of the politics of
fear on it. And because of that, I reject this unanimous consent, and I
object to it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from California.
Mr. PADILLA. So I thank my colleague for his response, but I take
issue with some items that I do believe need to be addressed and
clarified.
He makes the claim that the tax reforms from about a decade ago, I
believe it was 2017 to be more precise, was good for the economy. It
begs the question: Good for whose economy? Good for whose pocketbook?
The breaks were disproportionately for the most wealthy in America, and
average working families didn't benefit nearly, nearly as much. That is
where we should be focusing relief, No. 1.
No. 2, he argues that the math has been settled because when tariffs
are imposed, those are revenues going into the U.S. Treasury. I repeat:
When the costs go up by American companies importing products, they are
going to pass along that increased cost to American consumers. So it is
a tax by another name.
And the last point I will make is this because it was relevant in the
Environment and Public Works Committee

[[Page S2128]]

hearing earlier today when Transportation Secretary Duffy talked about
the concern the administration has about the increased costs and
budgets of a lot of transportation projects compared to the costs of
projects 4 years ago, 8 years ago, et cetera. It begs the question:
What will be the impact of these tariffs, whether it is on
transportation projects, on water infrastructure projects, on energy
infrastructure projects when the cost of materials goes up?
It is going to increase costs. It is going to delay projects. And,
once again, who pays the price? Working families across America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. We have had this debate for 10 years. The facts are out.
The biggest beneficiaries were the lower middle and upper middle income
families in America. The biggest hit, if we don't extend these tax
cuts, will be the lower middle and upper middle income families in
America.
Under that bill, we had more jobs, higher wages, higher benefits. The
average family's net wealth went up to historic highs, and that is what
is at stake right now.
The bottom line here is, you can throw all the numbers around that
you want, but the people in America know we had the strongest economy
in our lifetimes as this tax cut went into place. And if we see this
tax cut expire, we have seen the National Association of Manufacturers
and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce give us the data--a million jobs lost.
We are going to see GDP and our growth go down by at least a percentage
point, and the same kind of negative impacts on the economy will happen
every time we have a massive tax increase in this country.
This battle, no matter how you want to characterize it, is over
whether we should have another massive $4.3 trillion tax increase, and
I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

S.J. Res. 37

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I rise today in strong support of a
bipartisan resolution led by my colleague who is here today, Senator
Tim Kaine, which I colead with him and Senator Warner to restore
stability to our trade with one of our greatest allies, greatest
friends, and that is the country of Canada.
This resolution does one thing, and it does it clearly. It terminates
the President's declaration related to the Canadian border that he is
using as an excuse to impose across-the-board tariffs--which are, in
fact, taxes--on Canadian imports under the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act.
Passing this resolution just became even more urgent because of the
President's announcement of even more across-the-board tariffs this
afternoon, including a minimum 10-percent tax on all imports and even
higher tariffs on certain countries--including our friends and allies.
This is a country that has thrived on the fact and our economy has
grown because we do business with the world. And, already, with the
President's announcement--which he called ``Liberation Day''; I call it
a ``National Sales Tax Day'' because the estimates are that these
tariffs will result in about $5,000 in taxes--that is right--on the
average family in America every single year.
What has happened? Well, the stock market is closed, but the futures
are tanking. They are tanking. And that is because people get that this
is not going to work for our American economy.
They don't want a national sales tax. People involved in the economy
of this country, everyone from small business owners on, are going to
be the first hit by this because they do not actually have the
wherewithal and the big conglomeration to try to deal with it.
Small farmers in my State that are already dealing with retaliatory
tariffs, are already dealing with the fact that Canadians who used to
buy their stuff don't want to buy it anymore or other countries aren't
buying their stuff.
And what happens then? The Canadians look for other markets. And
there are other countries, other manufacturers, other farmers in other
nations that say: We are more than happy to fill your contract, sir. We
are more than happy to help you out with that aluminum, ma'am, because
of these tariffs.
Tourism from Canada right now, the numbers just came out, down 75
percent. That is hotels; that is restaurants. You think they don't know
what is going on in Canada? They are looking at every single move.
First, they were shocked, and now they are pissed, and that is exactly
what is happening right now.
This resolution is about drawing a line in the sand and saying: You
cannot abuse your emergency powers to start an unjustified trade war.
You cannot abuse your emergency powers for one of the finest
relationships in the world, the relationship between America and
Canada. And you cannot drive up prices, eliminate jobs, and put in
place a national sales tax.
Canada is not just our neighbor. With my State, it is our No. 1
trading partner. In fact, we do so much business with Canada, that it
is more than the total of our No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 largest markets
combined. We are the fourth biggest ag exporter, the State of
Minnesota, in the country. So we know a little bit about how this
works. In 2023 alone, our State exported 7 billion in goods to Canada,
including ag products, machinery, and medical devices.
That is a major hit for the retaliatory tariffs that we are going to
see. The damage can extend to every sector of our economy.
I just mentioned tourism. So I chair the Canada-United States Inter-
Parliamentary Group. I go to Canada a lot. I know our partners over
there. I know the people in the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party,
all of them. And the one thing that has united us to a tee is this
friendship that has far transcended this President.
I remember it was the Canadian Embassy in one of the worst of times
for our country that had banners draped in the front of their Embassy
that said: ``Friends, Neighbors, Partners, Allies.'' Those banners
aren't hanging there right now, and they are not going to put them up
anytime soon.
It was the Canadians that were the first to arrive after 9/11 to
volunteer to help out our country in its greatest moment of need. They
fought alongside us in two World Wars. This is a longstanding
friendship and an incredible trade relationship based on mutual respect
and trust, and, yes, two strong economies.
Because these new tariffs are already causing harm, as I noted, they
amount to a national sales tax.
Since the administration began to propose and implement or pause but
hang over people's head wide-ranging tariffs, wholesale prices have
gone up on everything from meat and coffee to natural gas and lumber.
Homeowner Association, Home Builders Association, Retail
Association--how many business groups? Are the Republicans not
listening to them anymore? And add to that the Steelworkers. Do they
not care about that? They are opposed to that, and they support this
resolution that Senator Kaine and Warner and I have come together to
introduce.
With these tariffs across the world, we are going to see a $20,000
increase to the price of a home and a $3,000 increase to an American-
made car. This might not mean much to Elon Musk and the billionaires in
Trump's Cabinet, but it means a lot to the people in my State.
Tariffs can be an important tool. Sure you can have targeted tariffs.
That is not what this is. These tariffs on Canada are an abuse of the
emergency powers. And if they want to negotiate this, put it in the
upcoming negotiations of the USMCA, the United States-Mexico-Canada
Agreement that I supported, that President Trump negotiated in his last
administration. Why wouldn't he do it there? Why instead is he doing
his usual shock and awe, jarring the economy? This is going to be a
blanket permission slip for tariff wars.

I will note again: Thanks, Senator Kaine, and our bipartisan group of
supporters.
The United Steelworkers, International Association of Machinists,
North America's Building Trades Union, AFL-CIO, Chamber of Commerce,
National Taxpayers Union, and National Retail Federation have all
endorsed this resolution.
Maybe we don't care about all those businesses and all those workers,
but maybe we should listen to them.

[[Page S2129]]

This resolution is about restoring common sense and responsible
governance. It is about Congress reasserting its constitutional role on
trade. And it is about standing up for American workers, businesses,
and consumers that are being asked to pay the price of this trade war.
Let's change course before the damage becomes even more permanent. I
urge my colleagues to support this resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. WELCH. Madam President, I fully support the resolution of Senator
Kaine, and I want to make three points.
No. 1, should Congress continue to abdicate its constitutional
responsibility, ceding it to the Executive?
No. 2, I want to talk about the total fantasy--fantasy world--that
the Trump economic agenda is grounded in, if you can use the word
``grounded.''
And then, third, I want to talk about how these tariffs will be a
dagger in the heart of the Vermont economy.
First of all, the question for this institution is, Will we, as the
U.S. Senate, accept the responsibility that each and every one of us as
Senators has to stand up for the independent authority and
responsibility of this institution?
As we know, our Constitution was based on the proposition of real
suspicion of the accumulation of power in any one entity. What was told
to us in the Federalist Papers is what we know: If you have the
concentration of power in any institution, that concentration of power
leads inevitably to the abuse of power.
The design of our Constitution was to have equal and independent
branches. And what I am seeing is a lawless rampage on the part of the
Executive being accommodated by an appeasing Congress, not standing up
for its authority in many different areas, and then also an attack on
the judiciary, as though the judges who disagree with an Executive
position should be impeached. But our authority over the budget is
being abdicated, as we saw in the CR.
But another area of authority for the Congress is the tariff
authority.
A couple of decades ago, this Congress gave and delegated some
authority to the President in a national emergency to impose tariffs.
That authority was given with the expectation--and rightly so, in a
mutually respectful civil society--that a President would use it for
the intended purpose and with restrain, whether it was Republican or
Democrat, and that national security had the connotation and
implication of a military threat to our country, where there needed to
be immediate Executive action to protect the citizens of this country.
What President Trump has done is run roughshod over that, showing no
restraint in using that delegation of authority, not for a national
emergency but for whatever his latest policy ideas are and whatever
leverage he wants to extract.
We cannot allow that to happen and maintain the separation of powers.
It is absolutely so fundamental to the long-term well-being of our
country.
So Senator Kaine is absolutely right. This is not a partisan
question. It is an institutional question. Do we see our responsibility
for maintaining that system of checks and balances? I do. That is the
heart of this matter, and it is as important as even the outcome of
what this tariff policy may be.
Second, where does this tariff policy come from? It comes from the
President who is claiming that it will be a new golden age if we impose
these tariffs.
By the way, these are astonishing tariffs: South Korea, 25 percent;
Vietnam, 46 percent; Taiwan, 32 percent; Switzerland, 31 percent;
Malaysia, 24 percent; Cambodia, 49 percent. Do we realistically think
there will be no retaliation against America for these tariffs? We know
there will be.
Yet what the President seems to think--and this literally is a
fantasy--is that the golden age of America was when we had the tariff
policy that economic historians say caused the Depression, but he says,
if we had had the tariff policy, then we wouldn't have had the
Depression. There is literally no support for this.
So the President has come up with this fiction, and what he is good
at is sales. He says it over and over again. He cloaks it in an
appealing objective: We want to have jobs back in America. And that is
certainly something all of us share. But this fantasy he has--and it is
a fantasy--that high tariffs are going to ``make us rich'' and be paid
for by other countries instead of our consumers--just ask anybody who
goes to Target or Walmart how that is going to work out for them. Ask
anybody who is going to want to build a house or buy a house, where the
prices are going to go up probably $25,000 in Vermont for a house.
The third thing I want to talk about is very concretely in Vermont.
This is devastating for us in Vermont. Our farmers get most of their
fertilizer from Canada--a 25-percent increase. Our farmers are on the
margin. They are operating on such a thin margin that a 25-percent
increase raises the existential question of whether they stay in
business.
Our maple sugar producers get their equipment largely from Canada--a
25-percent increase in the expense of buying an evaporator.
Vermont consumers and businesses--we in Vermont are along the
northern border. I see my colleague from New Hampshire. It is the same
for you. We get so much of our home heating fuel, so much of our
gasoline to power our cars, and so much of our electricity from Canada,
that at the end of that month, when you are juggling your checkbook and
trying to make it balance, you are going to have a higher electric
bill, and you are going to have a higher home heating bill. And every
time you fill up, you are going to pay between 25 cents and 40 cents
more a gallon because in northern Vermont, that is where our gasoline
comes from.
How is that going to serve anybody's interest? How is that going to
help the people who are working hard every day to try to make ends
meet? It is going to be devastating for them.
And in addition to all that uncertainty, we have a responsibility to
make, through policy, the lives of our folks in business, the lives of
our farmers, the lives of our moms and dads easier, not harder. In this
uncertainty that is the hallmark of the Trump approach and these higher
costs that are absolutely legislated as a result of his policy or by
Executive order, that is going to make life harder for all of the
people that I represent in Vermont.
Instead of just using my words, I want to use the words of a lot of
Vermonters. When we got word of these tariffs going into effect, we had
a couple of roundtables up in northern Vermont, in St. Albans and in
Newport. Obviously, I wanted to hear from voters. Here is how they say
it.
And, by the way, this is not a partisan deal. This is somebody who is
trying to run a business, somebody who is trying to pay their bills and
support their family. It is a construction company, a vegetable farmer.
Stoni Tomson:

It feels like death by a thousand cuts.

Vermont Foodbank, Jason Maring:

We get some of our vegetables from the Quebec side of the
border. If the 25-percent tariff was applied in full, it
would be about a $130,000-$150,000 unbudgeted hit to our food
procurement efforts.

Catherine de Ronde of Agri-Mark:

The ripple-effects that this could have on energy markets,
and of course manufacturing, is very heavy.

Matt Cook from PC Construction:

I'm just concerned in general that it's going to further
stagnate the ability for some of these much-needed
construction projects to move forward.

Denis Bourbeau of Bourbeau Custom Homes. They build about three or
four homes a year--a good business in Northern Vermont:

I can foresee the making homes unaffordable--which they
already are.

Another:

We would be strongly affected by the tariffs in terms of
the equipment costs for U.S. producers. . . . I'm very
concerned about the possible effects of this.

This is just another vivid example of that. Some of the hardest
working people we have in Vermont are our loggers. They harvest logs
and ship them up to Canada. And they will be paying a tariff when that
log goes up. When it is milled and returned as lumber that can be used
in home building, there will be a 25-percent tariff on that as that
lumber returns. Who is going to pay for that--the home builder or the
home buyer?
That is what is going to happen. How in the world is this going to
lead to the

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so-called golden age? The golden age is as much a fantasy as is the
fantasy that tariffs were the visionary economic policy that will bring
us to the promised land.
These tariffs, No. 1, are the authority of Congress, if we exercise
our authority. They are not the authority of the Executive, and
Congress should stand up for itself and assert its authority and
protect the constitutional promise of the separation of powers because
we know that the concentration of power leads to the abuse of power.
And, by the way, that is exactly what is happening right now.
Secondly, let's not be deluded by a fantasy economic theory that is
at the core of this. It just makes no sense. It has no credibility. It
has no intellectual foundation. Who knows how President Trump came to
believe in this so much that he asserts it?
But, third, if we look at what is the impact on the people we
represent--the people who build homes, the people who farm our fields,
the people who tap maple syrup, the people who run health clinics, the
people who run food banks--and we ask them: Hey, how is this going to
affect you? Will it help? Will it hurt? And when every single one of
those people we represent, who are doing the hard work, day in and day
out, say: Peter, this is a disaster--and we are going to vote for it?
No way.
Thank you, Senator Kaine.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my
colleagues because I am so concerned about the damaging impact of
President Trump's tariff taxes. I call them taxes because that is what
they really are, but those tariffs, particularly on Canada, although we
heard today that he announced a number of others.
I have been hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire.
But on Monday, I visited a bakery in Derry, NH, that may have to go out
of business due to what President Trump is proposing on tariffs on
Canada.
The owner of Chatila's Bakery moved to the United States 36 years
ago. He was a cardiologist and his brother a Ph.D. scientist. They are
from Lebanon. He became a citizen, raised his family, and sent his
daughter to college. He and his brother got interested in sugar-free
desserts and candies because their mother was diabetic. So he spent the
last 36 years building his business. And now he might have to sell his
factory because of the trade war that President Trump has started with
Canada.
Chatila's Bakery makes sugar-free desserts. They get some of their
ingredients from Canada. All of those ingredients are now more
expensive.
While I was there, he showed me a fuel bill he had just gotten that
said that because of the tariffs, his fuel bill was going up.
But, more important than that, 85 percent of his business comes from
exporting to Canadian customers. Most of his sales contracts in Canada
were canceled after these tariffs went into effect last month, so he
says he is going to lose between $400,000 and $500,000 this year in the
business.
Now, President Trump says he is worried about trade imbalances and
that he wants to support exporters. Well, here is an American small
business and an exporter, and because of what this President is doing
with his reckless trade war, this small business owner might go out of
business.
Mr. Chatila said to me:

When I came, this was the American dream, which is why we
built it. But now, you see it in front of yours eyes. It's
just melted, like ice.

I asked him what he would like to ask President Trump if he had the
opportunity, and his question was to the President:

What do you want me to do? If you really care about your
country, why don't you support small businesses, which are
the backbone of every community?

I think that said it about as well as anybody I have heard. We know,
sadly, that his business is not the only one. Many of our small
businesses in New Hampshire are reliant on travel and tourism.
I have heard from business across our State about Canadian tourists
canceling plans already, about bookings that they rely on that are not
going to come through. Last week, we saw that airline tickets from
travelers coming from Canada this summer are down more than 70 percent
from this time last year. That represents lost business for my
constituents and for businesses and communities across this country.
All of this will put their businesses at risk, and it will do so when
they are also facing higher costs for inputs because of these tariff
taxes.
Two weeks ago, I visited a bus company that runs buslines between the
seacoast of New Hampshire and Boston and New York. They are facing
$500,000 in added costs because of these tariffs. Now, on top of that,
he stands to lose business because fewer people are visiting the United
States. He also goes between the seacoast and Logan Airport--all of
that because the President has damaged the relationship we have with
one of our closest allies.
It doesn't make sense to me. What is the logic of antagonizing those
allies and partners whom we rely on?
Lest anyone forget, the President is claiming that the flow of
fentanyl from Canada justifies all this. Well, fentanyl and other drugs
are serious issues, and I have spent much of my time in the Senate
doing what I can to help stop those drugs from entering the United
States and to getting help for those who need it. Just last month, the
Senate passed the HALT Fentanyl Act, which is legislation I
cosponsored, along with a lot of my colleagues, which would permanently
schedule fentanyl-related substances.
Imposing tariffs against Canada is not the way to fight fentanyl and
other drugs. This kind of legislation, like the HALT Fentanyl Act, is
something that is going to have much more of an impact. CBP statistics
show that all of the fentanyl seized along the northern border from the
beginning of 2022 until now is 71 pounds. Now, that is a lot of
fentanyl, and that could kill a lot of people, so I don't endorse that
by any means, but when you compare that with the 67,966 pounds that
have been seized along the U.S.-Mexico border for the same period of
time, wouldn't it make more sense to focus on where most of this
fentanyl is coming from?
Instead of imposing tariffs, we should be working cooperatively with
our allies and partners, and Canada has taken a number of steps to
crack down and to stop drugs from coming into the United States.
The tariffs in place before today are likely to raise costs by nearly
$2,000 for the average household. That is money many families in New
Hampshire and across this country can't afford to pay when they are
trying to cover the costs of groceries, of housing, of childcare, of
energy--all of those things that President Trump, when he was running
for President, said he was going to address.
I have heard from many New Hampshire families about how these tariffs
will raise prices for keeping their homes warm, for putting gas in
their cars. Now the Trump administration has reportedly fired the
entire staff of the LIHEAP program that helps families and seniors heat
their homes when they can't afford to pay.
The message to the American people from this administration is
increasingly clear: They do not care about you and what your needs are.
So voting for Senator Kaine's resolution presents an opportunity for
Congress to help Americans who are worried about higher costs. I intend
to vote for this resolution to end the tariffs on Canada, to lower
costs for Americans, and to help our small businesses. I hope all of my
colleagues will do the same.
I just want to add that, in the last hour, President Trump announced
a new tax of 10 percent on everything Americans import, with far higher
taxes on many countries. Everything from the EU will now face a 20-
percent tax--Japan and South Korea, 25 percent. I mean, again, the
rationale for why we are going after our allies and partners makes no
sense.
This is a tremendous tax increase on American businesses and
families. It is likely the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S.
history. This new Trump tariff tax will add at least another $3,000 to
the costs for an average household.
Again, this President promised he was going to lower costs for
families. This does nothing to do that. He is taxing all of the goods
that people buy every day. What he doesn't tell you is that the reason
he is doing this is so that he can give more money to provide tax cuts
for the top 1 percent of

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the income earners in the country, so the billionaires.
I don't think this tax increase is going to help the small business
owner I visited on Monday or the families in my State and across this
country who are trying to afford groceries. I intend to vote to end
those tariffs on Canada today when I have the opportunity. I hope my
colleagues will join me.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues who are in
support of Senator Kaine's, I think, thoughtful approach on how we can
put an end to this tariff war with Canada.
I have got to tell you that one of the things about working with Tim
Kaine for 40 years is he always keeps a hugely optimistic view of
things. Boy, do I need a dose of Tim Kaine optimism today because we
have seen in our national security domain a reckless disregard for
classified information and no one, so far, held accountable. What a
message that sends to our allies and to the men and women who work in
our military or in our intelligence. If they did the same behavior with
the so-called Signalgate, they would be fired.
I need Tim Kaine optimism today because the long-awaited Republican
budget resolution adds $6 trillion to the deficit--$4 trillion in funny
math and about another $2 trillion for tax cuts. That then brings us to
not my words but to Peter Navarro's words, whom I happened to meet with
on a Sunday, who said that these groups of tariffs will add $6 trillion
in revenues.
Who do you think is going to pay for that? Candidly, it is going to
be the people who buy the Presiding Officer's cars at those great
dealerships in Ohio. It is going to be folks in Virginia. We had one of
our brewers in yesterday who has already laid off 20 percent of his
staff because he imports malted pilsner from Canada.
What we are seeing with Trump is not ``America First.'' What it is
going to be is ``America Alone.'' I say to anybody--and I spend way too
much time in a SCIF, I know--but ``America Alone'' is not an America
that is safer.
Then the notion or idea that we have picked on our longest best
friend in many ways--I am a little biased; my mom's parents were from
Canada. But the notion that this President is trying to turn Canada
into an enemy is beyond belief. You know, I talked with the senior
Canadian leader just the other day.
He said: Mark, you know, even if, tomorrow, Trump says, ``Never
mind,'' as he has gone back and forth a dozen times, or says, ``No
harm, no foul,'' the damage we will have done to the relationship
between America and Canada will take years to recover from.
Senator Shaheen just mentioned airplane flights are down 75 percent.
America's national anthem is booed at hockey games. We had another
person in who ships whiskey--Virginia bourbon--up to Canada. If all the
tariffs are off tomorrow, which they will not be, it will be years, if
ever, that Canadians will be buying American bourbon.
So, in dreamland, $6 trillion of tariffs, you know, is the largest
tax increase in American history. I believe it actually goes beyond
World War I.
Of the so-called ``Liberation Day,'' the only thing that is
liberating is this administration liberating Americans from their
savings because the market is down. They are liberating businesses from
their supply chains because of so much disruption. They are liberating
consumers from their hard-earned money because this is going to
translate into increased costs.
This isn't partisan. This isn't Democrat-Republican. This is math.
And no matter how much the President wants to strut on the South Lawn--
and I am glad to see at least the South Lawn was being used for an
announcement today as opposed to another day of a Tesla show lot--who
is going to bear the brunt of this? It is going to be Americans. It is
going to be Canadians. It is going to be the people around the world.
I am sure my friend has already mentioned this: Particularly from
Virginia's standpoint, Canada is our second biggest trading partner.
Virginia's businesses export approximately $3.3 billion worth of
products to Canada. We import about $3.2 billion. Virginia's farmers
sell about $430 million of goods to Canada. A lot of Virginia peanuts
go to Canada. They are not going to be going. That is going to hurt our
economy. As a matter of fact, in Virginia, 280,000 jobs in Virginia
depend on trade and investment with Canada.
I know, as Governor, I went--and I know, Senator Kaine, as Governor,
you went--because Canada is one of our best partners. What would the
reception be tomorrow if we showed up in Ottawa?
This is not going to be just another economic policy. This is at the
lifeblood of the Canadian economy, and combined with the so-called
reciprocal tariffs around the world, it is the lifeblood of the
American economy.
I know Senator Van Hollen is going to say a lot of the same things
that I was going to say.
I would just say to the Presiding Officer again: I know he sells
great cars, but I am not sure if even folks in Ohio are going to be
able to afford $2,000 or $5,000 more per car just because of ill-suited
tariffs.
So I would hope that folks on both sides of the aisle will actually
stand up to ``America First.'' Reject this misguided tariff strategy.
Reject this demonization of Canada. Recognize that ``America First''
doesn't have to be ``America Alone.''
The only thing that could make my day actually better at this point,
beyond that little dose of Kaine optimism, is if the Senate finally
comes to its senses tonight and endorses Tim's resolution, and we put
an end to this misguided economic policy.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking our
colleagues from Virginia, starting with Senator Kaine, who brought us
to this debate here on the Senate floor today on a very important
question, and to my other colleague from across the Potomac River from
Maryland, Senator Warner. We sometimes disagree on various issues. On
this, we have solidarity across the Potomac River. That unity comes
from a very simple result, which is that we are here to sound the alarm
about the trade war that Donald Trump just unleashed today.

He calls it ``Liberation Day.'' If he had made this announcement
yesterday, on April Fools' Day, people would have thought it was an
April Fools' joke. But this is no joke, and it is not liberation day.
It is a national sales tax day because that will be the result of the
President's action--a sales tax on the American people, a national
sales tax, because today the President announced he was levying
massive, across-the-board tariffs on countless goods, making big
promises but at the end of the day betraying the American people, who
are going to be hit hard by rising prices.
We have heard the President make a lot of promises about what these
tariffs will do. It is like a miracle cure. They are going to revive
American manufacturing. They are going to stop fentanyl. They are going
to balance our budget. They are going to make all of us rich, and all
of those other countries are going to pay for it. The problem is, none
of that is true. Other countries don't pay these tariffs; we do. It is
a sales tax on goods imported from other countries. American importers
pay the tax at the border, and they pass the cost on to the consumers.
What else are they supposed to do?
American manufacturers that put together products here in the United
States but import some of the parts they use in those products will
face higher costs, higher prices on the parts they import. They are
going to have to pass on those costs to American consumers, so they are
going to have to jack up their prices.
When they jack up their prices, not only do American consumers pay
more, but those American manufacturers and American producers, when
they are exporting goods overseas, they are having to export at higher
prices, and that makes their products less competitive overseas.
On top of that, it is a double whammy because when you have these big
tariff increases on products from other countries, other countries
aren't just going to sit back and take it. They are going to respond.
They are going to retaliate. They are going to put tariffs on American
products that we export to their countries.
What will happen then? That means that an American producer exporting

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products overseas, whether manufactured products or agricultural
products, their products are going to face higher prices in those
countries. They will be less competitive, and people in those countries
will buy less of those American products. So that means, here at home,
they will have to lay off workers.
It is going to hurt the economy back home in both those ways.
We saw a little miniversion of this during the first Trump
administration. Back then, Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese
products, and China responded with retaliatory tariffs on many American
farm exports like wheat, soybeans, and pork. What happened? Well,
American farmers sold less of those products overseas. They got more
expensive.
Do you know how we know this was all a big fake-out? When American
farmers were not able to sell their products into China's market
because of China's retaliatory tariffs, we bailed them out--we the
American taxpayer. We spent $23 billion in taxpayer money from the
American people to pay American farmers not to be more productive--they
were productive--but because China raised tariffs on their products in
retaliation for Donald Trump raising tariffs on theirs.
Look, we all recognize that tariffs can be an effective tool when
they are used in a targeted way with strategic industries, but that is
not what Donald Trump is doing. This is not strategic. He is starting
an all-out trade war and apparently does not care about the
consequences.
It is leading already to chaos in the markets. I am not going to go
through all those because Senator Warner, Senator Kaine, and others
have spoken to that. But at the end of the day, the direction we are
heading could well take us into a recession.
As Senator Warner mentioned, some of the President's people have said
this is going to be $6 trillion worth of tariffs over the next 10
years--by far the largest effective tax hike in American history.
Economists estimate that it will cost the typical American household
up to $4,200 more per year. That is a whopping sales tax.
The National Association of Home Builders says that tariffs will make
new homes cost up to 10,000 more, at a time when we are already facing
an affordable housing crisis.
North America's Building Trades Unions sent a letter opposing these
tariffs, saying:

We are seeing construction projects slowing down,
infrastructure investments being delayed, and economic
momentum weakening--resulting in smaller paychecks, fewer
jobs, and shrinking opportunities for skilled building trades
and workers.

A researcher at Cornell University said that a new car could cost up
to $20,000 more because of all the back-and-forth across borders and
all the additional tariffs that are applied each time a border is
crossed. U.S.-made cars are estimated to increase by up to $3,000.
So buying a house, buying a car--these are all things that families
save toward. So what this comes down to is a tax on the American dream.
These increased costs may not mean a lot to the billionaires in the
President's Cabinet. After all, we had the Secretary of Commerce say
recently with respect to Social Security benefits that, hey, if
Americans didn't get their Social Security benefits one week, nobody
would notice except the fraudsters. That is the kind of attitude we
have from this administration when it comes to increasing prices that
we will all experience as a result of these tariffs. They think people
won't notice, but they will.
Finally, I do want to talk to the other part of this issue--and I am
not going to belabor the point because others have spoken to it
eloquently, especially the chief sponsor of this effort, Senator
Kaine--which is that President Trump is abusing the International
Economic Emergency Powers Act to apply these tariffs to Canada.
That is a law aimed at protecting our national security. It is a law
that we have used against adversaries like Iran, Sudan, North Korea,
and Russia. But here, President Trump is using it to target our
longtime friend, our longtime ally Canada. He has declared a phony
``emergency'' on our northern border to target our friends there.
He claims that these punitive tariffs will somehow address the
fentanyl crisis. Of course, we should be addressing the fentanyl crisis
in the United States of America, and this Congress has done a lot. It
needs to do a lot more. But in the fight against fentanyl, the Canadian
people are, No. 1, our allies, and No. 2, they are not the ones who are
causing the problem. Only 0.2 percent of fentanyl trafficked into the
United States comes across the U.S.-Canadian border, and Canada is
right now putting together a $1.3 billion plan to strengthen that
border security and stop it altogether.

So this is a fake emergency declared by the President, putting on
these massive tariffs. I will close with why, and we are going to find
out more about this in the next couple of days.
I heard the chairman of the Finance Committee speaking a little bit
earlier about how the proceeds from collecting tariffs might be counted
and used to offset tax cuts which are going to be aimed at the very,
very wealthy in this country--tax relief for the wealthy paid for in
part by a national sales tax on all the other Americans in the country;
paid for, as we have heard, by going after Medicaid.
So whether it is a national sales tax or other efforts aimed at the
American people that will hurt the American people and hit them in the
pocketbooks, that is all done in service to pay for tax cuts for the
very wealthy, people like Elon Musk.
So I want to say thank you to the Senator from Virginia, Senator
Kaine, for blowing the whistle on this phony action taken at our friend
Canada, all as a pretext to increase tariffs, which amounts to a huge
sales tax on the American people in service of a tax cut for the very
wealthy.
I thank my colleagues.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow my colleague
from Maryland, who has described so well the reasons we should oppose
these tariffs.
I thank my colleague from Virginia, Senator Kaine, who has
demonstrated once again his leadership that makes him such a great
Member of this body.
I want to begin--and I hope the Presiding Officer will forgive me--
with a four-letter word. It is a word that I say to my children that
they should never use: ``dumb,'' D-U-M-B.
These tariffs are dumb. They are also cruel, and they are stupid.
They are imposed in the name of, perhaps, building manufacturing in
this country, which they won't do, or in the name of raising revenue to
cut taxes for the wealthy, which is adding insult to injury, or simply
for vengeance. So much of what this administration does is for the
purpose of vengeance and vanity.
Careless, cruel, reckless--that is what these tariffs are,
particularly as directed to Canada.
Let's be clear. The tariffs proposed by President Trump are a tax.
They are a tax. There has been no tariff ever imposed in the history of
the United States of America that has ever lowered prices. These
tariffs will raise prices. They threaten not only higher costs for
everything from gas, to groceries, to rental housing, but they also
deeply threaten a recession.
I have been reading a book called ``Freedom from Fear,'' written by a
great historian, a professor at Yale named David Kennedy. ``Freedom
from Fear'' is about the events and the misdirection and mistakes that
led our Nation to the Great Depression.
What began as a recession, what started as a Wall Street problem,
became a global depression because the world failed to realize that,
even then, our economies were connected and that tariffs could hurt all
countries when all countries adopted them, when a trade war ensued. And
a trade war now is what we face.
Canada has long been one of our Nation's closest allies and trading
partners. We have a bond with Canada that goes beyond simple economics,
although, frankly, our relationship with Canada supports millions of
jobs, protects the competitiveness of American businesses, and ensures
our long-term economic prosperity.
Our countries have countless trade and investment agreements, and
cross-border projects such as communications, highways, bridges, and
pipelines

[[Page S2133]]

have resulted in integrated energy networks and transportation systems.
We have a longstanding defense and security partnership providing us
with greater security than we could have alone.
And we share a border. But the border is a symbol of a bond that our
people have in common, a friendship that goes deep, a heritage and a
culture that we respect. These bonds will be betrayed by a reckless
trade policy the administration is pursuing that threatens to derail
that valuable--in fact, precious--partnership.
These tariffs are going to hurt all Americans. We have with Canada
one of the most comprehensive and important trading relationships. I
can go into the numbers. In 2024, Canada was the United States' second
largest trading partner, with $761.2 billion in total trade--the
largest single U.S. export market for goods. Every day, nearly half a
million people and billions of dollars in goods and services cross that
border.
But I want to focus on Connecticut for the moment because Connecticut
demonstrates what will happen to America as a whole, and I represent
the people of Connecticut. This regimen of tariffs will be catastrophic
for Connecticut. Friends in Connecticut, listen to what these haphazard
tariffs will do. Canada is Connecticut's single largest trading
partner, accounting for 20 percent of our total trade in 2024,
including 13 percent of our exports and 25 percent of our imports.
Consumers in Connecticut already face some of the highest electricity
prices in the Nation, with an average cost of 28.16 cents per kilowatt-
hour, compared to the national average of 16.26 cents per kilowatt-
hour. Connecticut and New England as a whole get a significant share of
our electricity from cheaper Eastern Canadian hydropower. The 10-
percent tariffs proposed on energy resources from Canada will directly
impact and drastically increase those electricity costs. ISO New
England has estimated that this tax would add $66 million in annual
consumer costs.
I hope President Trump will listen to the people of Connecticut and
New England when it comes to electricity costs. Do not impose these
tariffs.
The harm to Connecticut is far from limited to just energy prices.
Some of the largest State industries--including aerospace, defense,
advanced manufacturing, medical devices--all rely on trade with Canada
to remain profitable. These industries source key production imports
from Canada, including aerospace parts, critical minerals and metals,
basic chemicals, and petroleum and coal products. In return, we export
billions of dollars of goods to Canada.
We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people across
Connecticut--jobs, employment--who all stand to see their livelihoods
threatened if this tax is allowed.
It will ripple across Connecticut. It will reverberate through the
country to the Presiding Officer's State, to Virginia, New York,
Maryland, colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
The cost of living in Connecticut will rise drastically. We already
have one of the highest costs of living in the country. Taxing these
goods will put an undue financial strain on individuals and families
across Connecticut but, most important, on people who can least afford
a higher tax--our middle-income and lower income members of the
workforce, working people in Connecticut who have to buy stuff
depending on their paychecks--for groceries, for gasoline. A tax on
those products will hit them in the pocketbook. It will hit their
families. It will hit them at the kitchen table, when they go to the
drugstore to buy pharmaceuticals, when they have downpayments on homes,
on furnishings--across the board.
So I am not here to make a speech; I am really here to make a plea:
Mr. President, please reconsider. These tariffs are fundamentally
misguided. They are dumb. They are cruel, reckless, and careless. They
play fast and loose with America's credibility around the world.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes on S.J. Res. 37 and join us in
trying to save the American economy and our credibility around the
world.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Connecticut for
his excellent words. Much of what he said could be applied to New York.
I want to thank Senator Kaine for his seeing around the curve, seeing
how important this was months ago and persisting and persisting and
persisting in getting us to this place.
Now, Mr. President, President Trump just announced his new tariff
package a few hours ago, and it is even worse than we thought. In
addition to the tariffs that he has already imposed, he now has a 10-
percent across-the-board tariff on all products.
What is this going to do to American families? It is going to clobber
them. It is estimated that the Trump tariff will add about $5,000 to
the average family's costs. And why is he doing it? To reduce taxes on
the billionaires. They have said that. Navarro and he have said it over
and over again, that they want to reduce those taxes. It is outrageous.
It is outrageous.
The average family, sitting at the kitchen table on Friday night, is
saying to themselves: Whoa, boy. We had better cut back on our
purchases. Maybe we ought to not go out to the restaurant. Maybe we
ought not take that vacation we have been saving up for for a year.
Maybe we ought not to buy that new car.
Consumer confidence is lower than it has been in many, many years.
The average business, because of the chaotic nature--Trump says one
thing one day and another thing the next day--are holding back.
Businesses, small and large, need certainty, but there is no certainty
here with the chaos Donald Trump has created.
Listen to this. When told that it would raise the costs on the
American family, Trump himself said he ``couldn't care less'' if prices
go up. What kind of bubble is he living in?
These billionaires who are running the country--Trump, Musk,
Lutnick--they are in such a bubble, they don't know how the average
family is hurting. Yeah, they are billionaires. God bless them. They
made a lot of money. But don't think that average people are in the
same boat.
The cost of groceries, the cost of prescription drugs, the cost of
gasoline, the cost of buying a car, the cost of buying a house, the
cost of furniture, the cost of clothing--everything people buy--is
going to go up.
Donald Trump said he would reduce prices on day one when he got
elected. He is doing just the opposite with these tariffs. He is
raising prices through the roof and strangling American families.
My colleague in Connecticut alluded to Smoot-Hawley. The new Smoot-
Hawley is Trump-Musk.
These taxes could create a global trade war. Our allies--previous
allies--are aligned together at how they are going to get back at Trump
and what he has done to the country.
This is not ``Liberation Day,'' as Trump called it. This has made a
few-weeks-earlier, in effect, tax day--huge taxes through tariffs on
American families. It is a gut punch. It is a gut punch to the average
American.
So right now, I know Donald Trump is pressuring Senate Republicans to
vote this resolution down. He is treating this like a loyalty test. But
my plea to my Senate Republican colleagues: Stand with the American
people. You know how bad this is. A few of you have already said you
can't vote for this. Please don't be intimidated by Donald Trump, who
said he couldn't care less if prices go up on your constituents, my
Republican colleagues. Don't listen to him.
This is a disaster--a disaster for working families, a disaster for
the Nation's economy, a disaster for our alliances and relationships
around the world--all doing so much to hurt America for one darn
reason: cutting taxes for the billionaires.
This is a government by the billionaires. Everything they do--whether
it is this budget they came out with today or this tariff bill--is in
obeisance to the very few wealthy people who seem to control the
Republican Party and want another tax cut.
I urge everybody to vote against these horrible, horrible tariffs.
Tariffs on Canada have very little to do with fentanyl; we know that.
Tariffs on Canada and all the other countries he has now added to the
list have everything to do with more tax breaks for billionaires.

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I strongly, strongly urge a ``yes'' vote. This is worse than what we
had thought. He made it worse when he announced what he was doing a few
hours ago.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kaine for his leadership
on this issue.
President Trump's new tariffs are not ``Liberation Day''; they are
``Obliteration Day.'' They are going to be remembered as something that
raised taxes on every American consumer, had foreign countries then
attack businesses all across our Nation, all without a plan from
President Trump to have an end game.
President Trump is just making this up, and we are going to have to
wait to see how he responds when Europe attacks us, when Canada attacks
us, when Asian countries now attack us. He is inviting an attack upon
the American economy even as American consumers have to pay higher
taxes.
So we are just at the dawn of the equivalent of an all-out war--trade
war--with every other country in the world. And who is going to pay the
price? American workers and American taxpayers. They are the ones who
are going to pay the price.

Federal Judges

Mr. President, I rise tonight to speak about the outrageous calls we
have been hearing to impeach Federal judges who have ruled against
Donald Trump. That is right. Donald Trump and his extremist MAGA
supporters think that if a Federal judge dares to rule against the
President, that judge should be impeached.
Recently, Trump tweeted that Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge of
the Federal district court here in Washington, DC, should be impeached
because he ruled against Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport
alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador without any due process.
Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has been on the
losing side of several recent judicial decisions, has referred to
Federal judges as ``evil'' and called for ``a wave of judicial
impeachments.''
In the other body, MAGA extremists have taken up the cudgel and filed
Articles of Impeachment against Federal judges who have ruled against
the President, and then they receive political contributions from Elon
Musk for doing so.
Just last week, Speaker Johnson even suggested eliminating entire
Federal courts because their judges have dared to rule against Donald
Trump. These calls for the impeachment of judges and elimination of
courts are just the latest in salvos in a broad attack on the courts,
on lawyers, on the rule of law by the President and by his allies.
I come to the Senate floor today to condemn this dangerous and un-
American onslaught against the judiciary and legal profession and urge
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to speak out against it.
Federal judges confirmed by the Senate and given life terms under the
Constitution during good behavior are not like contestants on ``The
Apprentice.'' You don't get to fire them because you don't like the way
they are doing their job.
The President and his acolytes don't seem to understand this. With
each call to impeach judges, they disregard and disrespect the
Constitution; its separation of powers; its checks and balances; and
its establishment of three coequal branches of government--one of which
is a judiciary whose principal job, as the Supreme Court explained more
than 200 years ago in Marbury v. Madison is to ``say what the law
is''--to say what is constitutional--and that is precisely what the
courts have been doing.
Since retaking office, Donald Trump has issued a series of Executive
orders that are blatantly, patently, and obviously unconstitutional and
illegal. Trump's arrogant belief that he can supersede the Constitution
and the laws passed by Congress with an Executive order has spawned
more than 100 lawsuits against his administration.
Federal judges across the country, judges appointed by Democrat and
Republican Presidents alike, including Donald Trump himself, are doing
the same job that judges have done in our country for centuries. They
are interpreting statutes, making legal determinations, and upholding
the Constitution of the United States.
They are moving swiftly to hear cases and, for now, preventing some
of the most egregiously unlawful Trump policies from taking effect:
revoking birthright citizenship, blocked; freezing all Federal funding,
blocked; pulling down public health websites, blocked; capping funding
for critical health research at the National Institutes of Health,
blocked; denying gender-affirming healthcare to transgender youth,
blocked; allowing Musk unbridled access to Social Security data,
blocked; clawing back funds appropriated by Congress and obligated to
my National Climate Bank, blocked by a Federal district court judge.
And the list goes on and on and on--blocked, blocked, blocked, blocked.
In these cases, like any others, if the losing party disagrees with
the judge's decision on what the law is, they can appeal it. What they
shouldn't do is to call for the extraordinary step of impeaching the
presiding judge. That is a remedy the Constitution reserves for only
grave ethical or criminal misconduct.
That is why John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States, was
compelled to issue a rare public statement after President Trump called
for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg.
Without referring to the President directly, the Chief Justice
nonetheless rebuked him, explaining that ``for more than two centuries,
it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response
to disagreement'' and ``the normal appellate review process exists for
that purpose.''
Unfortunately, the MAGA extremists calling for impeachment of judges
or the elimination of the courts don't care about this, the
Constitution, centuries of judicial norms, the rule of law. They only
care about one thing: fealty to Donald Trump.
The baseless calls for Chief Judge Boasberg's impeachment confirm
that. This is a judge who was a Yale Law School graduate, who cut his
teeth as a successful homicide prosecutor, who was first appointed to
the bench by a Republican President more than 20 years ago, who was
confirmed to the Federal bench in a 96-to-0 vote, and who was named by
Chief Justice Roberts to a seat on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court where he served a 7-year term, including as the
court's presiding judge.
Yet this is the judge, widely respected throughout the judiciary and
legal profession, who President Trump calls a ``radical left lunatic, a
troublemaker, and an agitator.'' That is Trump talking about Judge
Boasberg just because he ruled against the administration in a
preliminary decision, which by the way, a three-judge panel of the DC
Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld on review.
So while Trump's ad hominem attack on Judge Boasberg was typically
baseless, it and other attacks like it leveled against other judges are
no less dangerous. They have given rise to increased threats against
judges--a ``significant uptick'' as Chief Justice Roberts put in his
report on the Federal judiciary at the end of last year.
Indeed, according to the Chief Justice, U.S. Marshals Service data
showed a tripling of hostile threats and communications directed at
judges over the previous decade.
Recently, judges have also experienced the swatting of their homes,
the delivery of pizzas to their homes--actions intended to send a
message: We know where you and your family live, where your children
are. So reach the result which we want. Be afraid, be very afraid.
This is wrong. Very wrong. It is dangerous. It is intended to
pressure judges in their decision-making that puts lives at risk. It
deserves the strongest possible across-the-board condemnation by all
Senators and all Americans.
Instead, my Republican colleagues have been awfully quiet, fearful of
upsetting President Trump, who has followed the ``Godfather,'' part 1,
playbook and made them an offer they can't refuse--a primary opponent
if they just don't go along.
Finally, I have a few words about Donald Trump's unprecedented
Executive orders targeting law firms and individual lawyers who have
litigated against him. These orders have suspended security clearances,
canceled

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government contracts, barred employees from Federal buildings, and
erected other obstacles that prevent lawyers from representing their
clients.
Trump has even directed the Department of Justice to seek sanctions
against attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits or engage in vexatious
litigation against him.
So with Donald Trump coming after lawyers and law firms, it is gut-
check time for law firms in our country, especially the big law firms
that the President has targeted for revenge and retribution because of
their lawyers daring to do their jobs and representing clients in cases
against him.
I commend those firms like WilmerHale, like Jenner & Block, who are
standing up, who are fighting back. And we need all law firms to stand
up to this administration and to continue to stand up for the rule of
law. And those that don't, especially those that seek to appease and
accommodate the President out of fear their bottom line will suffer--
grave risk, grave harm to our liberties will, in fact, depend upon the
lawyers who take difficult and unpopular cases, often against the
government, and zealously represent their clients in those matters.
I will conclude with this: The attacks on our judiciary, the calls
for the impeachment of judges, and the attempts to intimidate and
retaliate against lawyers who dare to stand in defense of the
Constitution are not just an assault on individuals, they are an
assault on the very foundations of our democracy.
The courts are not pawns in a political game. The rule of law is not
up for negotiation. If we allow this dangerous precedent to take root,
if we tolerate threats against judges and lawyers fulfilling their
constitutional duties, we set the stage for the erosion of the checks
and balances that have safeguarded our Nation for over two centuries.
This is not about protecting one man. This is about protecting the
principles that ensure justice and fairness for all Americans. It is
time all of us as a nation to rise above partisan interests and defend
what makes us strong; our commitment to the Constitution, to the
independence of the judiciary, and to the rule of law. I urge my
colleagues--all of my colleagues--and every American to stand with me
in defending these sacred institutions, not for our political health
but for the health of our democracy itself.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

S.J. Res. 37

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here in support of Senator
Kaine's effort to get this body to take a public view on President
Trump's mad declaration that we have a border emergency with Canada
happening right now.
I can tell you that if I go home to Rhode Island and ask people what
the emergency is in their lives, I wouldn't get one person who said:
Oh, we have got a real emergency with Canada. They are a huge threat.
That whole Canada situation, boy, that is dangerous.
This is nutty stuff, and it is dangerous stuff economically. Just in
Rhode Island, Canada is our largest international trading partner.
Twenty-two percent of Rhode Island's exports are to Canada, and we
import from Canada as well. And when the tariffs get reciprocated by
our Canadian friends after this ridiculous behavior from President
Trump, then that is going to affect all Rhode Islanders.
We buy a lot of energy, for instance, from Canada, and that is going
to raise costs for Rhode Island families. It is a direct hit to
people's pocketbooks. And as has been pointed out, this is just a shady
way to hit Americans in the pocketbook, to raise revenue so that this
phony-baloney budget resolution we are about to have to deal with can
open up revenues that they can then use as a justification for lowering
taxes for the billionaires and the big corporations who already pay way
too little in taxes.
Some billionaires pay no income taxes at all. The corporate share of
America's revenue has gone from about 30 percent of America's revenue
down to single digits. That is just a huge sucking sound pulling out of
America's revenue the revenue of the corporate entities, and it is not
the mom-and-pop flower store. It is the huge multinational that goes
and pretends that it is doing its business in Ireland or the Cayman
Islands or someplace and hides profits.
This is a tax racket against the American people that is now being
propped up and made worse by a tariff racket against the American
people. And the excuse is one of the dumbest ones ever: that the
emergency is fentanyl.
Well, Rhode Island was at the heart of the opioid epidemic. That is
why I worked with Senator Portman to pass the CARA bill, the biggest
addiction recovery response bill this body has ever passed. I take this
issue deadly seriously--not the President. Not the President.
Mr. President, 0.2 percent of the fentanyl in America comes across
the enormous Canadian border. If you did it like per mile of the
American border, it would be immeasurably small. And over this fake
excuse that there is a huge fentanyl problem, 0.2 percent, they are
going to dump enormous new expenses on American families.
People have called this a sales tax, and it kind of is because what
it does is it raises prices. It raises prices because the money that
the Federal Government takes in has to be recovered, and it gets
recovered from families, from people who are paying higher prices for
imported goods or higher prices for the domestic freeloaders who are
going to raise their prices to match the imported goods just the way
the fossil fuel industry raised their prices to match the foreign
prices of fuel after the Ukraine invasion and so gorged themselves that
they made the biggest profits off the American people in the history of
corporations.
It was the biggest gouge ever by the scoundrels of the fossil fuel
industry, and now we are opening the door for this to happen across all
industries.
American families are going to be hurt, and they are going to be hurt
hard. And it just puts revenues on the books that the Republicans can
then use to go and do what they really want to do here, which is to
make sure that all their billionaire cronies, everybody who is
surrounding Trump, all the pals in the Cabinet, and all the ones who
write the big checks to the super-PACs and who fund Republican
politicians don't have to pay taxes anymore.
It is ``Leona Helmsley Day'' here in the Senate. Taxes are just for
the little people. This is a disgrace, and I hope there will be a few
voices on the Republican side to recognize that considering the
Canadian border to be an emergency is preposterous.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I rise to bring the attention of this body
to a broken promise by our President. Our President promised, in the
campaign and recently in an address to all of us here in Congress, to
make America affordable again; to deal with the high prices of
groceries, of fruits and vegetables, of housing, of housing supplies,
of energy--to deal with high prices. Millions of Americans who voted
for President Trump said they did so out of frustration about high
prices.
Well, today, President Trump has announced he is going to impose
tariffs on virtually every trading partner we have, and I rise in
support of a piece of legislation we are about to vote on here in the
Senate that gives us the chance to do something.
So to my colleagues, if you have heard, as I have, from your
constituents, calling with concern and alarm about how much prices have
not gone down but have gone up, I recommend you think about one
country, one of our most trusted and loyal allies--some of the nicest
people on the planet. Who doesn't like Canadians?
Canadians have served alongside us in virtually every war we have
ever fought. They are a NATO ally and partner, and for my small-but-
mighty State of Delaware, our major export destination and the nation
from which we import the most.
And yet, because of an emergency at our border, which I think is
wholly unjustified by the data of how little fentanyl actually comes
into our country across the northern border, President Trump is moving
ahead with slapping tariffs on Canada.
Tonight, you have a chance, I say to my colleagues, to vote to undo
the declaration of an emergency on our northern border. You can vote to
undo the

[[Page S2136]]

harm to businesses, to small families, to retirement accounts. Don't
look at your 401(k) if you don't want to know tomorrow the consequences
of indiscriminately slapping tariffs on every one of our major trading
partners.
This is not ``Liberation Day'' but ``Tax Day''--a new national sales
tax that will harm the imports we buy from virtually every country and,
because of the countervailing tariffs, harm our exports.
A tariff is a tax, and tonight we will take a vote. And I hope some
of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will join Senator Kaine
and many of us in recognizing it is ludicrous to use the special
emergency powers that Congress gave to the President assuming he would
only do so in a case of war or active open hostility, not in the case
of one of our trusted and loyal partners and allies, the great and kind
people of Canada.
In recent meetings with Canadian leaders, they have said: Don't make
us do it. Don't make us impose tariffs on you.
But, tonight, the Trump administration has imposed tariffs on dozens
and dozens of our trading partners.
To my friends and colleagues, let's vote to undo this phony crisis
and vote to undo the tariffs on U.S.-Canada trade.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
MR. CRAPO. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in opposition to the
resolution. Senator Kaine and his fellow cosponsors want a strong trade
relationship with Canada. So do I.
I consider, like President Reagan, Canadians to be not just ``friends
and neighbors and allies . . . [but] kin, who together [with us] have
built the most productive relationship between any two countries in the
world today.''
By the way, I would note that the tariffs that President Trump
announced today did not get applied to Canada. What we are talking
about here today, however, in Senator Kaine's resolution is not about
our trading relationship. It is about the emergency stemming from
fentanyl and illegal immigration.
Senator Kaine and the other cosponsors are challenging the ``how,''
meaning the means of what President Trump is doing, the threat of
tariffs through which President Trump addresses a national emergency.
The Senate, however, is set up to vote on this proposal today on the
``why''--whether an emergency exists.
Under President Biden's watch, the number of people arrested on the
northern border rose more than tenfold from 2022 to 2024. Indeed,
publications like the Economist and the New York Times, documented
here, showed extensively how the northern border has become
increasingly insecure over the last year, with a massive spike in the
number of migrant crossings. Just look at the spike on the chart. This
is the New York Times reporting.
And what do they say?

Illegal migrant crossings skyrocket 50-fold under the
Biden-Harris [administration] at the northern border . . .
that includes New York.

Indeed, we have a crisis at the northern border. It is a fentanyl
crisis and a migration crisis. In considering these figures, I want to
emphasize, I don't blame Canada. I blame President Biden.
President Biden repeatedly refused to prioritize border security.
Indeed, when President Biden's nominee for the Commissioner of Customs
and Border Protection came through the Finance Committee, I asked him
if he would at least admit that there was a border emergency, including
on the southern border as well as the northern border. He, like
President Biden himself, refused to take it seriously, with dire
consequences for our communities in America.
When President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau met last year, the
Biden administration's top priorities included encouraging both
countries to increase climate spending and advance diversity and
inclusion. But when it came to common priorities that Americans
actually wanted to see progress on, like combatting illegal
immigration, President Biden's view was that we should both--Canada and
the United States--expand pathways to allow more migrants into the
country and to promote Canada accepting 15,000 migrants.
President Trump is right to change this trajectory, precisely because
Canadians also are victims of illegal immigration and fentanyl. We must
both prioritize these threats to our citizens.
To sum it up, when my colleagues and I meet constituents who suffered
at the hands of criminal elements which crossed illegally into the
United States or from smuggled fentanyl, we do not consider them to be
any more or less a victim depending on which border their harm
illegally crossed.
We say the most important thing is that this crisis must stop. Under
President Trump, it is stopping.
Accordingly, I encourage my colleagues to vote no on the resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise for some concluding comments. I
believe the vote will follow. I want to acknowledge my colleague from
Idaho's comments about the northern border.
This is a bill that is fundamentally about tariffs. I acknowledge
what my colleague said, that there are issues at the northern border,
and I have colleagues who have shared that, and there are mechanisms
for working out those issues.
And I would ask my colleagues if you are concerned about any issue on
the northern border, do you think we will more likely be able to deal
with it if we work hand in hand with Canada, or do you think the path
to success is punitive actions against Canada?
I would argue plainly that the right way to deal with any issue at
the border with Canada is to work with Canada, not wage a trade war
against them.
This vote, though, is fundamentally about tariffs--the President's
imposition of tariffs against Canada that will be a costly tax increase
on American families.
If the President has concerns about trade issues with Canada, guess
what: This President negotiated a signature trade deal, the USMCA, that
got 89 bipartisan votes in this Chamber, and he has a negotiating
process to find a resolution to any issue he cares about. The
imposition of tariffs does nothing more than put a tax on American
families.
What I would like to do--I did speak earlier today. But what I would
like to do is just read quickly from many stakeholders who have weighed
in, in support of S.J. Res. 37.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

Tariffs are taxes--paid by Americans--and they will quickly
increase prices at a time when many are struggling with the
cost of living.
[That is why] it is appropriate for Congress to exercise
its authority under IEEPA and pass SJ Res 37.

North American Building Trades:

The United States and Canada share far more than just a
border--we share a deep, enduring economic and workforce
partnership that has strengthened both nations. . . . That
partnership is enshrined in the United States-Mexico-Canada
Agreement (USMCA), a comprehensive trade agreement that
President Trump himself negotiated.

We shouldn't circumvent this agreement.
Sheet Metal Workers:

Tariff penalties aimed at Canada for non-trade objectives
have already caused harsh and unnecessary economic pain for
US workers and harm to our nation's construction and related
metal fabricating . . . businesses.

National Retail Federation:

U.S. retailers depend on Canada for a wide range of
consumer goods.
These operations are all now being significantly disrupted
because of the tariffs applied to Canada.

U.S. Conference of Mayors:

These actions are raising prices for consumers, disrupting
key industries such as construction and manufacturing. . . .
They also risk increasing already high housing costs, as . .
. lumber, steel, aluminum, and other critical building
materials will make housing . . . more expensive.

The AFL-CIO:

Imposing large, across the board tariffs on Canada aimed at
non-trade objectives will only cause unnecessary economic
pain for workers and businesses.

The International Association of Machinists:

These new tariffs on Canada, one of our closest allies . .
. are unjust and will have a lasting negative impact on
American and Canadian workers.

The National Taxpayers Union:

Canada is an important supplier of goods that strengthen
U.S. security, including

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crude oil, natural gas, steel, and aluminum. Tariffs that
restrict our access to these supplies and increase their cost
will weaken our industrial base.

The Taxpayer Protection Alliance:

TPA enthusiastically supports [the effort] to overturn
President Trump's February 1, 2025, national emergency
declaration. This use of . . . IEEPA is fraught with issues.
The ensuing trade war will inevitably raise costs for
consumers.

United Steelworkers:

These new tariffs are misdirected, unsubstantiated by
facts, and harmful to the very workers we represent.

And, finally, Advancing American Freedom, the think tank formed by
former Vice President Mike Pence:

Tariffs are a tax on American families and businesses. The
first Trump administration cut an excellent deal with Canada
with the USMCA. The president should not abandon this
agreement.

We have a chance to stand strong for our businesses and consumers,
our foresters and farmers, our national defense industry and
shipbuilders, against cost increases that will hurt people's
pocketbooks, hurt American competitiveness, and hurt our national
security.
I urge my colleagues to vote yes on S.J. Res. 37.
I will yield back all time on the resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). All time was yielded back.
Under the previous order, the clerk will read the title of the joint
resolution a third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading
and was read the third time.

Vote on S.J. Res. 37

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the
third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
Mr. KAINE. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the
Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Kansas (Mr.
Marshall) would have voted ``nay.''
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 48, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 160 Leg.]

YEAS--51

Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Collins
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Fetterman
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
McConnell
Merkley
Murkowski
Murphy
Murray
Ossoff
Padilla
Paul
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden

NAYS--48

Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
Young

NOT VOTING--1

Marshall

The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 37) was passed as follows:

S.J. Res. 37

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled, That,
pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50
U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared on February 1,
2025, by the President in Executive Order 14193 (90 Fed. Reg.
9113) is terminated.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, with respect
to S.J. Res. 37, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid
upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________