Bipartisan Push to Reverse Canada IEEPA Tariffs Delayed

Kaine, who is leading the bipartisan resolution to end the emergency, and thereby stop the tariffs, had expected a vote on April 1 on the emergency, but a marathon speech from Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., delayed the vote.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., joined Kaine's press conference April 1. "Tariffs are simply a tax increase."

"The amount of fentanyl that comes in on the Canadian border is minuscule," he said. "They always make up an excuse, because they have no justification for what they're really doing."

Schumer said he supports broad tariffs on China, "which really has hurt us in trade every step of the way. To do that to Canada, our friend, our interrelated economies [that] depend on each other? Makes no sense whatsoever, but his administration makes no sense."

Co-sponsor Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said: "This resolution really sets a line in the sand, and it says you cannot abuse your emergency powers to start an unjustified trade war."

While the senators predicted the resolution to revoke the emergency could gain a majority of votes -- two Republicans have already said they are for it, and they only need four -- that is a long way from overturning the tariffs. For one, the House has blocked a vote on a resolution in that chamber that would have revoked both the Mexican and the Canadian emergencies. The procedural move prevents such a vote through the end of 2025.

But even if both chambers voted to end the emergencies, it would take a veto-proof, more than two-thirds margin to force President Donald Trump to end those tariffs.

"Republicans, behind closed doors, are telling us: keep going. Keep doing this. Because this is just decimating our businesses in our states," Klobuchar said. "So this is the moment they can stand up."

Trump posted on social media trying to stop Republican defections on the resolution. He wrote, "Senator Tim Kaine, who ran against me with Crooked Hillary in 2016, is trying to halt our critical Tariffs on deadly Fentanyl coming in from Canada. We are making progress to end this terrible Fentanyl Crisis, but Republicans in the Senate MUST vote to keep the National Emergency in place, so we can finish the job, and end the scourge. .... Don’t let the Democrats have a Victory. It would be devastating for the Republican Party and, far more importantly, for the United States. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

The senators also talked about the economic harm caused by other sudden tariff hikes Trump has decreed in his first two months in office. Kaine said there's a bakery called "Mom's Apple Pie" with three locations in Northern Virginia, and the owner told him tariffs are weighing on the business. He was surprised, and asked how. "Aluminum pie tins," she replied. "They all come from Canada."

Bill Butcher, owner of Port City Brewing in Alexandria, Virginia, said he just let two of his 20 employees go because of uncertainty about how tariffs will raise his costs, as well as a possible localized economic downturn due to federal layoffs. He imports barley malt from Canada, imports bottle caps from Mexico, and he doesn't know how the price of aluminum cans is going to increase with 25% tariffs on imported aluminum.

Butcher said he hasn't paid more for malt yet, but his Canadian suppliers told him that after April, they don't know if they can hold prices steady. Of the beer that's not sold in kegs to bars, currently 70% is in bottles, and 30% is in cans, but Butcher doesn't expect to be able to shift more out of cans to avoid the aluminum tariffs. "Our bottle supplier notified us about three weeks ago that, as of today, they can no longer supply us with bottles, so we weren't expecting that. The big brewers, they don't want to pay the tariffs either, and so they are shifting a lot of their production back to bottles, away from cans, and they've monopolized the bottle supply in the U.S."

Butcher says a six-pack of his beer costs $12.99 now, and he's afraid that if he raises prices to cover tariffs on inputs and containers, once the distributor and retailer add on their margins, the retail price could go as high as $18.99. If that happens, he thinks customers will stop buying the everyday luxury of a craft beer.

Dave Cuttino, owner of a small bourbon distiller in Richmond, Virginia, talked about how he lost his shelf space in Alberta, Canada, after the fentanyl tariffs.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Trump may roll back the tariffs, but the bitterness that Canadians feel over the taunts about becoming the 51st state and the tariffs on their products won't readily fade. Spontaneous boycotts of American products -- and a possible shift away from buying U.S. military equipment -- could be lasting. "It's going to lead this economy into recession," said Warner, who made a fortune as an early founder of cell-phone companies before becoming a politician.

House Democrats who sponsored a resolution that would have rolled back both the Mexico and Canada emergencies said no matter what happens with the Senate resolution, they will keep pushing.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., noted that the House Republicans changed the rules to avoid a vote to terminate the emergencies "so they didn't even have to be on the record" on the tariffs on Mexico and Canada. DelBene, who was speaking at a press conference April 1 after the House adjourned early for the week, called it "a different form of running out of town."

The House Republicans adjourned after a combination of Democrats and a handful of Republicans rejected a move to quash a vote that would allow new mothers and fathers to vote by proxy in the first 12 weeks after their children's births. But DelBene and her colleagues argued that the adjournment was a pretext to avoid taking questions on tariffs imposed on Liberation Day, April 2.

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said, "I wouldn't want to be here Liberation Day," if he were a Republican member of Congress. He added: "We're liberating the American people from their savings."