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Floor Speech
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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his advocacy for small businesses. I hadn't heard that--turning Main Street into Pain Street--but as usual, he is able to take a whole complex concept and put it into one sentence that people will probably remember more than my entire speech right now, but let me continue.
I rise today, just hours before yet another self-imposed tariff deadline set by the President. He has threatened our allies and trading partners with an August 1 deadline to make deals or to see a dramatic increase in reciprocal tariffs. And while a few of these agreements have been announced, the result for the American people has been chaos, costs, and corruption--all up.
Let's start with the chaos.
The President promised 90 deals in 90 days. Instead, we have gotten more than 100 tariff changes--this way, that way, up and down--and barely a handful of vague trade frameworks, most of them announced without any details. Only one of the six agreements the President has announced this month has actually been signed. But even these newly announced frameworks are very thin on details and still amount to a historically high, 15-percent-across-the-board tariff on American consumers and businesses--the highest effective tariff rate in modern U.S. history.
This is no way to treat our friends and allies, and it is certainly no way to run trade policy and strengthen our economy.
Manufacturers and farmers in my State and across the country are being asked to make business decisions when the rules have been changing by the week or the day. I have spoken with small business owners who are holding back investments because they don't know what tariffs they will be paying next month or even next week.
And it isn't just chaos; it is also corruption. The administration slapped a 50-percent tariff on the country of Brazil even when we have a trade surplus with them. Remember, at the beginning, when he was talking about ``Well, with some countries, we have these big deficits, and that is different than the surpluses''? Why would you slap a 50- percent tariff on a country that we have a trade surplus with? Why? Because the President didn't like the political headlines coming out of the country. That isn't a trade strategy; that is weaponizing economic policy.
Meanwhile, American families are paying the price. When the administration boasts about collecting over $100 billion in tariffs this year, that is $100 billion in new taxes. It is not China paying for Trump's tariff taxes; it is the people of our country. Trump's tariff taxes are the largest tax increase on the American middle class in over half a century.
The President's new tariff taxes are already raising costs for American families by $2,400 a year--$300 of that in food costs alone. According to one estimate, fresh produce could rise nearly 7 percent under the new tariffs that are set to take effect on Friday.
It is American manufacturers who are absorbing the costs when they have parts that are coming from other countries. It is the American exporters, like farmers, who are losing markets. The markets will dry up. And it is American consumers who are feeling it at the checkout aisle. That might not mean much to the wealthy who just got those giant tax breaks, but it means a lot to seniors who are already struggling with higher grocery and prescription drug costs, and it means a lot to people who are struggling with high costs. And I just read about how the Treasury Secretary is now talking blatantly about privatizing Social Security.
In Minnesota, the Small Business Person of the Year--Busy Baby owner Beth Benike--fears her business can't survive under these policies.
I have heard from Mark, the CEO of a flower company in our State, who told me his business is being undercut by foreign competition that is exempt from the very tariffs his company is forced to pay.
I have heard from Minnesota's soybean farmers, who are concerned about losing markets that they have spent generations developing.
In my State, we export over $7 billion in goods to Canada every year. Canada is not just our top trading partner; it is our trusted ally. Yet, under Trump's policy, we are slapping tariffs on them too.
Border crossings are down, tourism is down, and it is taking a toll on our economy.
That is why Senator Kaine and I got a vote on his resolution, which I was proud to be the lead cosponsor on, to say: Unleash us from this. Congress must take back its power over tariffs and the power of the purse. And, yes, we actually passed that bill. It is sitting over there, waiting in the House, as prices go up, as chaos goes up, and as corruption goes up.
You know, these are real people, real businesses, real farmers, and they are trying to survive in the uncertainty while the President treats our economy like a game show.
Let's be clear. I support strong trade enforcement. I backed targeted tariffs to combat the unfair dumping of steel and market manipulation, especially by China. I actually went over and met with the trade enforcers in the Commerce Department a few years back. I thanked them for their work and spent hours with them.
But this isn't a targeted approach. What President Trump is doing is a blanket approach that punishes our allies and our own workers more than our adversaries. He is using emergency powers to bypass Congress, and they are just letting it happen--our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--and are enacting sweeping trade taxes with little regard to the economic consequences. That is not leadership; that is an abuse of authority.
That is why, as I noted, I co-led the bipartisan Trade Review Act with Senator Kaine and Senator Warner. When the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO agree like they did on that bill, you know we are doing something right.
So I will keep working to restore common sense and responsible governance to our trade policy on behalf of American families, businesses, and farmers.
I supported the USMCA, which was a Trump trade agreement which the President was so proud of at the time. I would ask: Why not negotiate these issues--some of the issues I know we have? Why not negotiate that within the framework of that agreement? Because it is up for review. Instead, we have this chaos.
Right now, more than half of our major trading partners--accounting for 56 percent of U.S. imports--still don't have finalized deals. We have 24 hours to go. The clock is ticking.
But here is what we do know: This is not how you grow American manufacturing, this is not how you give farmers certainty that they can export to market, and this is certainly not how you lower costs for the middle class.
Minnesotans have had enough of these tariff taxes. They want solutions, not showmanship. They want a trade policy that works for farmers and workers and their families. They want leaders who will tell the truth about what these tariffs are: They are a tax on the people of America.
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