International Trade Today is a service of Warren Communications News.

House Democrats Introduce Bill to End IEEPA Tariffs

House Democrats, left and center, introduced a bill that would roll back all the tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act -- 10% global tariffs and those on Canada and Mexico -- and would require that most tariffs, quotas, tariff rate quotas or concessions receive approval from Congress before going into effect.

Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article

If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.

Safeguards, antidumping and countervailing duties, and withdrawals of concessions after the U.S. wins at a dispute panel could still be done by the executive without a vote in Congress.

While this bill would leave in place 25% tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum, it still goes further than a bipartisan bill introduced earlier in the week in both the House and Senate. That bill would allow new tariffs to be in place for only 60 days unless Congress approved them, but wouldn't rescind any IEEPA or sections 232 or 301 tariffs.

At a press conference announcing the bill April 10, House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Chair Linda Sanchez said past Congresses granted the president the power to hike tariffs for national security or to pressure countries to end unfair trade practices, "But President [Donald] Trump has gone rogue and is abusing these powers as we've never seen before."

The bill is called the Stopping a Rogue President on Trade Act, and is co-sponsored by all 19 Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee, the committee with the responsibility to write tax and tariff law.

Sanchez said importers don't know where to shift sourcing, and that a 90-day pause is not enough to provide certainty. "None of our trading partners are safe, and there is no clarity from the president about what may come next," she said.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who often has been a free-trade skeptic, said at the press conference that almost half the companies in Austin's manufacturing trade association are pausing hiring because they can't predict what they'll be paying for inputs. He said that Trump seems to be "a one-man crusade for a recession," and that this bill "seeks to stop the madness."

Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., another free-trade advocate and co-sponsor of earlier bills to take back decision-making on tariffs, said, "The president's drunk on power and taking a sledgehammer to the economy."

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., a long-time advocate of free trade who led those earlier bills, said during the press conference: "Republicans could end this trade war right now with a simple vote." However, the House passed a rule the evening of April 9 that blocks a privileged resolution to revoke the IEEPA emergency over the trade deficit, with no vote permitted until Oct. 1.

After the press conference, she asked: "The real question is, why won't they bring this bill, or any bill up? They're afraid to stand up on this issue. And if they're proud of what the president is doing, then they should vote on it. And if they believe that we should stand up for the American people, then they should make sure that we have a vote, and we stop the craziness that the president ... has put in place."

When asked if more tariff hikes -- such as on imported prescription drugs -- might get Republicans to act, DelBene said, "I don't know what will give them courage, when they should be seeing the damage that's happening to their communities."

Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., another free trade advocate, had noted at the hearing with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on April 9 that IEEPA's text says the president can only regulate trade in the face of "unusual and extraordinary threats," but the trade deficit that's the subject of the latest emergency has been persistent for decades.

DelBene questioned at the hearing why countries would want to make concessions to the U.S. on tariffs or trade barriers when Trump is throwing out free-trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, South Korea and Australia. She said April 10 in a hallway interview, "How can anyone do a deal with us, if [the Trump administration] could decide to do a deal, and the next day they could blow it up?"

She also criticized Trump's comment that he might consider tariff exclusions for companies particularly hard hit by the IEEPA action, which is now imposing a minimum of 145% tariffs on Chinese imports. He said he would choose instinctively who deserved a break. "It shows that he can just on a whim, decide, and what does that mean, that he likes someone better one day, the next day he doesn't?"