U.S. Senate in Bipartisan Vote Rejects Trump Tariffs on Brazil as Coffee Prices Spike

By Ashley Murray

WASHINGTON — Five Republican U.S. senators joined Democrats Tuesday to terminate President Donald Trump’s national emergency that triggered steep tariffs on goods from Brazil.

The vote came ahead of a major case before the Supreme Court that could decide whether many of the president’s tariffs violate the Constitution.

Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, along with Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, supported a joint resolution in a 52-48 vote.

The measure’s passage in the Senate marks a shift from a previous effort in April, when Senate Republicans blocked a resolution to terminate Trump’s emergency tariffs on Canada. Murkowski, Collins, and Paul also supported that measure.

The resolution is not likely to see a vote in the Republican-controlled U.S. House, meaning it is not likely to become law.

Coffee Canister in the Senate

Senate Democrats forced Tuesday’s floor vote just days after they filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to find Trump’s unprecedented tariffs, triggered under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, unconstitutional. Murkowski was the lone Republican to join the brief.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., spoke on the floor ahead of the vote with a canister of Maxwell House coffee beside him. 

Kaine said Trump’s tariffs on Brazilian goods are an “abuse of presidential power that people are feeling every time they walk down a grocery store aisle to buy coffee for their families, to buy ground beef for their families.”

“No president, Democrat or Republican, should be able to declare a national emergency justifying the imposition of 50% tariffs because a friend of theirs 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 terminate a national emergency.

Trump declared a national emergency and imposed a 50% tariff on Brazilian imports on July 30 after accusing Brazil’s government of “politically persecuting” its former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup to remain in power in 2022.

‘No Taxation Without Representation’

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who cosponsored Kaine’s bill, said on the floor ahead of the vote Trump is using his emergency powers “to tax us without our consent.”

“I, for one, still believe in the principle of no taxation without representation, and will vote to terminate this contrived emergency and end these unconstitutional import taxes,” Paul said.

The vote to reverse 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 harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise. This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions to end emergency tariff authorities,” McConnell said, referring to Trump’s decision to add another 10% tariff on Canadian goods. That came after the Ontario province 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 already announced new deals, trade deals with major trading partners, including, most recently, Cambodia and Malaysia. Other such announcements may still be forthcoming. I urge other trading partners to reach similar trading deals,” Crapo, chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, said on the floor ahead of the vote.

Both tariffs and climate change are to blame for the recent spike in coffee prices, reports the Los Angeles Times.

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