Congress tests waters on tariff challenge 

Last month, I observed that Congress was remaining relatively quiet about the president’s announced imposition of 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico and 10 percent tariffs on imports from China.   

Although the president has since reacted to uproars from various business and agricultural interests and plunging stock and bond markets with jerky pauses and adjustments, the silence of the lambs on the Hill was palpable, mainly because GOP members did not want to upset their party’s leader in the White House.  

President Donald J. Trump has often proclaimed the word “tariff” as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” Many Americans, however, are increasingly coming to consider it a dirty word. The cable news channels’ repeated examples of how much tariffs would increase the costs of such things in this country like automobiles, houses and groceries convinced many Americans that tariffs do not punish exporting nations so much as they do Americans consumers — their lives and livelihoods. 

Town hall meetings, social media, phone calls and letters from irate constituents soon got many in Congress to pay attention and at least feign some action to placate the masses. It became clear in the halls of Congress, if not before the cameras, that members strongly felt the need to put some constraints on the president’s seeming unfettered tariff-making authority.  

President Trump initially ignited the storm by invoking the International Economic Emergency Act of 1977, arguing that the trade imbalance with other countries was disadvantaging the U.S. Although tariffs are not mentioned in that act, nor in the National Emergencies Act of 1976 which was also cited by Trump, both laws give Congress the power to terminate the emergency by enacting a joint resolution to do so.  

The obvious impossibility of that option succeeding is the overwhelming GOP opposition in the House, the certainty the president would veto it, and the lack of two-thirds majorities in both houses to override a veto.   

Nevertheless, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), introduced such a termination resolution. Before it could be taken up, however, the House Rules Committee slipped a self-executing provision into one of its special rules that effectively blocked the privileged consideration of any such resolution for the remainder of this session of Congress. The House adopted the special rule the next day on a party-line vote. A termination resolution can still be brought under the regular legislative process, though that usually requires majority leadership clearance for floor scheduling purposes.   

The first tangible sign of bipartisan pushback to the president’s tariffs occurred in the Senate where Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) introduced a bill to undo the 25 percent tariff against Canadian goods. On April 3, that measure passed, 51-48, with four Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mitch McConnell (Ky.) — joining all 47 Democrats in support. Meeks is looking to introduce an identical bill in the House and making it the subject of a discharge petition, requiring 218 signatures, to bring it to the floor.

The day after the Senate vote on the Kaine bill, another bipartisan bill, the Trade Review Act of 2025, was introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). It would require the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of the imposition of any tariffs, along with his reasons for doing so. Congress would then have 60 days in which to approve the tariffs, or the tariffs would expire.   

So far, six Republican senators have signed on as co-sponsors of the Grassley-Cantwell bill. In addition to McConnell, Collins, and Murkowski, Sens. Jerry Moran (Kan.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), and Todd Young (Ind.), have signed on. It is unclear at this point whether the measure will be brought to the Senate floor after the Easter recess.      

It is also uncertain at this point whether the president’s tariff moves, including pauses and adjustments, will become so injurious to the national and international economic health that Congress will eventually come around to requiring by law the pre-approval for any tariff increases a president proposes, as proposed by the Grassley-Cantwell measure.  

The best argument the president has going so far is that flexibility during an international economic emergency is a powerful tool to wield as a bargaining lever to get other countries to come to the table and work-out compromise trade agreements. The worst argument is that the global trading system will somehow benefit from all this turmoil. 

For now, many Republicans are sitting on their cards, hoping that somehow the Supreme Court will bail them out by finding Trump’s tariffs unconstitutional, and thereby avoid any retaliatory actions by the president. 

Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran culminating as chief-of-staff of the House Rules Committee in 1995. He is author of, “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).