Terminating the National Emergency Declared to Impose Global Tariffs

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, I want to support everything that my colleague, the ranking member of the Finance Committee, just said about these tariffs.

I want to make two points about the tariffs--one, the tariffs themselves, and then second, the congressional failure to assert its own authority on policies that it has the constitutional responsibility for when our failure results in economic pain and insecurity for the American people.

First of all, the tariffs. When the history of this decision is written, President Trump's imposition of these wild and reckless tariffs is going to be seen as one of the greatest economic blunders in a century. It is that bad.

What is happening in Vermont is happening in every State across this country. First of all, these tariffs are a tax. Second, they are paid for by consumers, by manufacturers, and by producers. Third, it is having a negative impact on trade and on our economy already. Today's information about the gross domestic product shrinkage is evidence in and of itself.

In Vermont, Trump's tariffs are estimated to cost Vermont households more than $1 billion. More than 18,000 Vermonters work in industries that are targeted by retaliatory tariffs, but virtually every Vermonter is going to be impacted by increased costs--inflation--as a result of the tariffs.

As an example, food, fuel, energy--all of these things are going to be impacted and really affect people in their day-to-day and month-to- month budgets.

We get a lot of our electricity, a lot of our home heating fuel, and a lot of our petroleum from Canada, especially in the northern part of our State. Those costs are going to be increased, especially with the expected retaliatory tariffs that are imposed on us by countries subject to the arbitrary action of President Trump.

Farmers are really hit hard. Most of our farmers in Vermont import their fertilizer from Canada. There is about a 25-percent increase that they are going to be paying. And these are farmers, as the Presiding Officer knows, that operate on the thinnest of margins in the most uncertain of activities, subject to weather and price fluctuations and so many other things that make our farmers courageous entrepreneurs. But why add 25 percent to the cost of fertilizer when that input cost is already so high? It is mind-boggling to think that this is a voluntary action by the President.

Canada, by the way, happens to be our biggest trading partner, and 34 States have Canada as their major trading partner. In these tariffs--in Canada, we are a 2.1 billion import partner with Canada--20 percent tariff. China--a lot of input from China that our manufacturers use--54 percent tariff, plus who knows how many more tariffs depending on the day and how President Trump feels when he wakes up. Trinidad and Tobago: 81 million, 10 percent tariff. Germany: 75 million. Mexico: 77 million.

Very frustratingly for all of us, the sweeping global tariff order unnecessarily increases prices and taxes on countries that have trade surpluses with America.

I recently heard from a Vermonter who imports coffee and has a niche business that has become extremely successful. The tariffs on Colombia have resulted in this: A container that cost $700 last month--that container now costs $13,000. How do you deal with that? A hit to the margin is--no business can absorb that.

Vermont is also home to one of two businesses in the world that produce these unique snow globes, and they have been in business for 25 years. It is a modest business, but it is one that was created by a Vermont entrepreneur, and it has been really successful. They are going to have to close their doors at the end of the summer with these increased tariffs, basically, on China.

A second point that I think is relevant to these tariffs is the arbitrariness of their implementation and the arbitrariness of how and who is affected. We have a situation where we supposedly have these tariffs on China. Apple Computer, quite understandably, was upset. It was going to increase the cost of iPhones. Well, no problem. Tim Cook was at the inauguration, sitting on the throne of honor, and he had the telephone number, made the call, and the tariffs on iPhones vanished.

You know that snow globe manufacturer that I mentioned from Vermont? She does not have Howard Lutnick's phone number. She does not have Scott Bessent's phone number. She does not have President Trump's phone number. She is out of luck.

So now, with these tariffs and the way they are being implemented without any congressional engagement whatsoever, we are turning our economy from one where it is based on a good product, really good service, where you compete in the marketplace and if your product is better and your service is better, you succeed, to an economy that is more based on access. Do you know Lutnick? Do you know Bessent? Do you know the President?

Oh, and by the way, if you contributed a couple million dollars to the inauguration, you probably do know them and they give out the phone number.

That is absolutely outrageous. People work hard. They produce a good product. They give good service. Shouldn't they be entitled to the reward for the labor that they have done; whereas, what we are seeing now is that if you are connected, you can be rewarded regardless of how good your product is or how lousy your service is. That is offensive-- and should be--to every single one of us here, and that is absolutely what is happening in the White House.

Another thing is there is a casual disregard for how hard it is for everyday families in the Presiding Officer's State and mine and in the ranking member's State to pay the bills because inflation has been here. Instead of arguing about who is at fault for that, let's solve the problem, not aggravate the problem. And these tariffs aggravate the problem. There is absolutely no denying that. This is just the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.

Another element of this is, what is the purpose of these tariffs? President Trump won't give a clear answer. It is to make us rich. They will pay; we won't. It is to bring manufacturing back here. Or it is to punish folks that he deems unworthy. It depends on the day, and it depends on who is asking. So there is no coherent rationale connected to the imposition of this enormous economic pain and cost increase that is being imposed on American businesses and American consumers.

The other question here that is profoundly important for this institution--every single one of us is proud to be a Member of the U.S. Senate, and I think our pride is about our pride in the Constitution as citizens where, under the Constitution, this Congress plays a role as a coequal branch of government. And I think every single one of us here is wary of the accumulation of excessive power in any one person or in any one institution.

Congress has steadily over the years been ceding much of its responsibility and authority to the executive branch. There is no authority greater than the power to tax, and that is why, in the Constitution, the power to impose tariffs resides in the House of Representatives and the Senate. And shouldn't it be that way? Because in the imposition of the tax, there has to be a decision that--in asking our citizens, who we represent, to turn over hard-earned money to the government, we have to be able to justify the purpose for which those funds are being expended.

By allowing the President to take over, in effect, the taxing authority that occurs when the tariff is imposed, we have ceded that responsibility to him or that authority to him, and we have abandoned our responsibility to look our constituents in the eye if and when we say a tax should be imposed. None of us like to do that, but a government has to collect revenues for the common good. We have delegated that authority to the President, and it is wrong of us to do that.

So we can have different views about whether there should be a tariff or what the rate should be, but we have a collective responsibility to do everything we can to maintain the constitutional structure of three independent branches of government, each a counterweight to the other. That is not just an abstract concept; that is the wisdom that has served us well for well over 200 years, that those checks and balances give all our citizens an opportunity to have a seat at the table when major decisions about their lives and their futures are being made.

So that is why this decision that we are about to make is not just about the tariffs. It is not just about, in my view, how recklessly they are being applied and imposed. It is not just about how they infect our economy with corruption, where it is who you know rather than how hard you work that is going to get you ahead. It is about the basic structure of our constitutional order, and every single one of us has the responsibility to protect that because that is not about us. It is not about who we represent. It is about how our country can operate with a democratic system where every single person, through their representatives, has a seat at the table.

So I urge all of us to take a look at what our constitutional responsibility is. Whether we agree or not on so many different issues of vital concern to the future of this country, we each have a responsibility to act in a way that protects the constitutional system. That means that we exercise authority over tariffs; we don't give that away to an executive branch decision.

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank the senior Senator from California not just for his leadership on protecting the voting rights of all citizens in this country but for his work as the California Secretary of State, where he gained a nationwide reputation for running free and fair elections.

Senator Padilla, thank you so much for your work there, and thank you so much for your leadership here.

I want to stand here in solidarity with my colleagues to push back, oppose, denounce President Trump's March 25 Executive order, which claims to preserve the integrity of U.S. elections. It does no such thing. And, by the way, the idea that the President, who spent years denying the outcome of the election he lost gives him absolutely no credibility when he is speaking about his commitment to free and fair elections.

Like my colleagues--all of us--I am committed to safeguarding the security of our elections and working with anyone and everyone in the Chamber to advance that objective. All of us revere the right of citizens to make the decision about who their leaders are.

Unfortunately, many of our colleagues in the House, Republicans in the House, have fought to gut the election security grants our States depend on. I say that--usually, these are not partisan issues on voting, but it is turning into that. And we are seeing a one-sided, one-party approach, particularly out of the House, that goes to the heart of our electoral process and the right of each of our citizens to make their decision and their vote be the one that counts.

At the same time, despite the political violence at home and rising tensions abroad, the Trump administration has taken an ax to CISA. As we know, that is the Agency that works to curb emerging cyber security threats. And that threat, those threats, are a threat to the election integrity that is so essential to the well-being of our democracy.

The Executive order makes an assumption that noncitizen voting is a problem. The assertion that noncitizens are voting is alarming. Fortunately, it is not true. Also, Federal law already bars noncitizens from voting in congressional and Presidential elections.

So this is not a question of whether there is some backdoor effort on the part of one party to allow noncitizens to vote. It can't be done. It is illegal now. This Executive order would not change that.

Study after study has also shown that the rate of noncitizen voting is incredibly small, almost too small to measure--roughly 0.0001 percent, according to a reliable estimate. Obviously, that error is so small that it is hard to measure and would not have any material impact on our elections.

If you don't believe me, ask folks over at the libertarian Cato Institute, a very conservative organization. They have labeled President Trump's claims about noncitizen voting as ``bogus''--their word, not mine.

The order of the President also raises significant constitutional issues. The Constitution entrusts our States--and in the case of certain core rules of conduct, Congress--with the authority to regulate elections, not the Executive.

The Executive order President Trump has signed flips that framework and purports to vest the President with expansive new powers that he does not have--not just him but any chief executive.

It attempts to enact through Executive fiat what the Trump administration seemingly believes it cannot achieve through the legislative process, through an act of Congress; namely, Senate consideration of the SAVE Act, many provisions of which are contained in the President's Executive order.

I ask my colleagues to join me in focusing our attention on the very real problems that confront our Nation and are pushing back against the Trump administration's usurpation of the Senate's constitutional prerogatives.

President Trump is attacking the right to vote with respect to dismantling of the Department of Justice organization of attorneys who are being punished for their efforts to protect that right to a vote. That organization within the Justice Department is being actively dismantled.

And the President has currently used the Department of Justice as a tool to enact his--my view--very extreme policy positions, and that includes the Civil Rights Division at the Department whose mission includes protecting the right to vote.

According to press reports, all career supervisors in the voting rights section have been reassigned to other positions completely outside their areas of expertise. In other words, it is about destroying the Civil Rights Division.

The Assistant Attorney General, Harmeet Dhillon, surely, at the direction of the White House, is punishing career attorneys. This is outrageous.

Also, reportedly, political appointees at the Department of Justice have ordered the dismissal of all active cases and the closing of all active investigations by this section.

Our Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice has a revered history for standing up for the rights of all citizens and their constitutional rights to be enforced and protected, and that brazen attack on the Civil Rights Division will leave it totally unable--as the President, apparently, prefers--to defend the democratic right of our citizens to vote.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the President's Executive order.

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