A barista prepares a coffee drink. (Nazar Abbas Photography via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON – Five Republican U.S. senators joined Democrats on Tuesday in ending President Donald Trump’s national emergency that brought steep tariffs on goods from Brazil.
The vote followed a key Supreme Court case that could decide whether many of the president’s tariffs violate the Constitution.
Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina in co-sponsoring a joint resolution in one 52-48 Vote.
The passage of the measure in the Senate marks a shift from a previous effort in April, when Senate Republicans blocked a resolution to repeal Trump’s emergency tariffs on Canada. Murkowski, Collins and Paul also supported the measure.
The resolution is unlikely to receive a vote in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, meaning it is unlikely to become law.
Coffee can in the Senate
Senate Democrats forced the vote Tuesday just days after filing an amicus brief push the Supreme Court Deeming Trump’s unprecedented tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act unconstitutional. Murkowski was the only Republican to join the mandate.
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., spoke on the floor before the vote, a can of Maxwell House coffee next to him.
Kaine said Trump’s tariffs on Brazilian goods were an “abuse of presidential power that people feel every time they walk down the grocery store aisle to buy coffee for their families or ground beef for their families.”
“No president, Democrat or Republican, should be able to declare a national emergency that justifies imposing 50% tariffs because a friend of his is being prosecuted for breaking the law in another country,” he said.
Kaine used a decades-old law that allows the minority party to force a vote to end a national emergency.
Trump declared a national emergency on July 30 and imposed a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports accuse The Brazilian government is accusing its former right-wing extremist President Jair Bolsonaro of “political persecution”. Plotting a coup to stay in power in 2022.
“No taxation without representation”
Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who co-sponsored Kaine’s bill, said ahead of the vote that Trump was using his emergency powers “to tax us without our consent.”
“For my part, I still believe in the principle that there is no taxation without representation and will vote to end this artificial emergency and abolish these unconstitutional import taxes,” Paul said.
The vote to repeal Trump’s tariffs on Brazilian products was the first of three bipartisan resolutions this week protesting the administration’s emergency tariffs.
Kentucky’s senior senator and former majority leader Mitch McConnell said: “Tariffs make both building and buying in America more expensive.”
“The economic damage of trade wars is not the exception in history, but the rule. And no close reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week I will vote for resolutions to eliminate emergency tariffs,” McConnell said, referring to Trump’s decision to do so add an additional 10% tariff on Canadian goods. This came after the province of Ontario ran an anti-tariff ad featuring the words of President Ronald Reagan.
Trump tariffs defended
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, criticized the joint resolution as “counterproductive to the progress already made by President Trump.”
“The President’s historic trade negotiations are bearing fruit. President Trump has already announced new agreements, trade agreements with major trading partners, including most recently Cambodia and Malaysia. More such announcements may be on the way. I urge other trading partners to enter into similar trade agreements,” Crapo, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said before the floor vote.
Both tariffs and climate change are responsible for the recent rise in coffee prices. Reports the Los Angeles Times.
