Tim Kaine: Trump's global trade war is strangling the economy. Congress must step in.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan majority in the Senate passed my legislation to roll back the senseless tariffs President Donald Trump announced on Canadian imports on Feb. 20 — evidence that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are concerned by Trump’s tariffs.
Americans across the country agree. They know that tariffs are akin to a national sales tax, raising prices on all kinds of everyday goods, including groceries, clothing and medicine. All told, these new taxes could cost the average U.S. family nearly $5,000 per year. It's clear that there will be a steep price to pay if Congress fails to take back its constitutional authority to weigh in on matters of taxation and international trade.
Fortunately, thanks to a procedural pathway I’m using alongside U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, senators will have the opportunity today to do just that when we force a vote on legislation to terminate the broad-based global tariffs Trump announced on April 2. This comes following the Senate passage of my resolution to terminate the Canada tariffs.
These bills aren’t just symbolic. If passed and signed into law, they would be binding legislation to repeal Trump’s tariffs — the largest tax hike on Americans in history. Even if passed by Congress and subsequently vetoed, they would add to meaningful pressure that is building on President Trump to reverse course on his disastrous tariff policies.
I know from Trump’s first term that this can work. In 2020, I was able to get bipartisan legislation through Congress challenging Trump’s military strikes against Iranian targets, which he conducted without any form of congressional buy-in — and likely in violation of the Constitution.
Though Trump vetoed this legislation, the fact that it passed both houses of Congress with strong bipartisan majorities sent Trump a message that he would not have Congress’ support for blundering into a new war in the Middle East. Ultimately, Trump heard our concerns and did what the legislation would have required him to do anyway — tensions de-escalated with Iran and Trump never again undertook such brazen military action without Congress’ involvement.
Strategy aside — acting to roll back Trump’s broad tariffs is simply the right thing to do. Members of Congress are obligated as legislators to use whatever tools we have available to protect Americans’ security and prosperity.
Time is of the essence. Not only will the cost of Trump’s tariffs be passed on to American consumers, prices are already going up for many components and raw materials that American companies need to manufacture products in the United States. Companies are laying off workers in response, and thanks to inevitable retaliation, it will only get worse from here.
Countries around the world have shown that they won’t take Trump’s tariffs without a fight. That’s not surprising. Tariffs lead to retaliatory tariffs, which tend to hit some sectors — like agriculture, which is already suffering after years of low commodity prices — especially hard.
The damage from Trump’s tariffs bleeds beyond the economy. They are also making us less safe by making it harder to work with true allies like Canada and the European Union to link arms and push against true adversaries like Russia and China. I heard this time and again throughout my recent meetings with foreign leaders in Poland, Ukraine and Germany.
For the sake of our economy and our national security, it’s critical that Trump abandon his outdated model of the U.S. economy and get up to speed on the 21st century. American manufacturers don’t operate in a silo — they compete in global markets and rely on global supply chains, meaning they stand to lose mightily from universal tariffs. Not to mention the fact that the U.S. doesn’t trade solely in goods — when it comes to services, we run a significant surplus.
With his tariffs, Trump took a bad policy idea and made it even worse by implementing it in a chaotic and haphazard way. One day he’s announcing tariffs. Then he’s pausing them. Next, certain products are exempted and he’s agreeing to consider waivers for others.
The result, according to the business community in Virginia: confusion and exhaustion. You can’t make investment decisions if you have no idea whether tariffs are going to be announced in a middle-of-the-night Truth Social post on a country where you do business. That means less money spent hiring new workers and selling fewer products in our communities. And that can even mean businesses choosing to expand their operations by investing money in other countries — when they otherwise would have done so here in America.
Trump inherited the strongest economy in the world. Then, he climbed into the driver’s seat and promptly started driving us into a ditch. Consumer confidence has plunged, the stock market has convulsed, and the Federal Reserve and International Monetary Fund have sounded the alarm about risks to the overall U.S. economy.
And for what? It’s unclear what end goal Trump is steering toward, or who he’s even negotiating with. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping can’t even agree on whether trade negotiations are underway between the U.S. and China. Given President Trump’s constant threats, pauses, impartial implementations and hedging, other countries probably know that they can just wait him out, hoping he’ll back off if the U.S. is thrown into a recession. So much for the "art of the deal."
Enough is enough. Congress needs to restore economic sanity by dismantling Trump’s global tariff scheme.