US Senate votes to rescind Trump’s tariffs on Brazil | Trump tariffs
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved a measure that would end Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Brazilian imports, including coffee, beef and other products, in a rare show of bipartisan opposition to the president’s trade war.
The vote passed 52-48.
The resolution, led by Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, aims to reverse the national emergency that Trump declared to justify the taxes. But that is almost certain to stall in the U.S. House, where the Republican-controlled chamber has moved to pre-empt any attempt to block the president’s tariffs.
Even if the measure reaches the president’s desk, it would have defied Trump’s veto.
“Tariffs are a tax on American consumers. Tariffs are a tax on American businesses. And they are a tax imposed by one man: Donald J Trump,” Kaine said in a floor speech.
“Tariffs make it more expensive to both build and buy in America. The economic damage of trade wars is the rule, not the exception, of history,” Republican Mitch McConnell said Tuesday. “And no amount of squint reading about Reagan would reveal otherwise.”
The renewed push in the Senate comes on the heels of an April vote in which four Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a measure that would roll back tariffs on Canada. They included senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, former Republican leader McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who co-sponsored the legislation.
But a later attempt to block Trump’s “Emancipation Day” tariffs failed, with two supporters of that effort absent from the vote and requiring a simple majority to pass.
Trump in July declared He said a national emergency amounted to an “unusual and extraordinary threat” regarding “recent policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Brazil.”
Speaking to reporters, Kaine suggested the tariffs were retaliatory in connection with his investigation into Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, a close Trump ally, was convicted in September and sentenced to 27 years in prison for attempting a coup in 2022.
