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A small group of Senate Republicans once again joined with Senate Democrats to reject President Donald Trump’s tariffs — this time on Canadian goods.
The Senate advanced a resolution from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., on a bipartisan basis to end emergency powers that Trump used to declare retaliatory tariffs against Canada earlier this year.
Almost the same core group of Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – joined Senate Democrats to reject the tariffs. Republican Senator Thom Tillis chose to vote against this latest attempt to reject Trump’s tariffs.
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A small group of Senate Republicans have joined with Senate Democrats to reject President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images)
“The vice president came over yesterday to try to rally Republicans during lunch,” Kaine said before lunch. “This shows that the White House is concerned about dissenters over this.”
In fact, their vote against Trump’s tariffs on Canada came after Vice President J.D. Vance warned Republicans it would be a “huge mistake” to break with the White House over the president’s tariff strategy, and said using tariffs on countries around the world provides leverage to generate better trade deals in return.
Paul, one of the sponsors of the Kaine resolution, has consistently rejected Trump’s use of tariffs and argued that they are a tax on U.S. consumers and not foreign countries.
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Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, during a confirmation hearing in Washington, January 15, 2025 (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
He noted that the message it would send to the White House, despite pressure from Vance to uphold Trump’s duties, was “that emergency rule is not what the Constitution intended, and that taxes are supposed to originate in the House.”
The decision was in response to Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in July to impose tariffs on Canadian goods. The country’s tariffs vary, with Trump initially imposing 35% tariffs on the country earlier this year, along with a blanket 50% tariff on steel from other countries.
However, he recently increased tariffs on Canada by 10% following an ad last week featuring former President Ronald Reagan, which used audio from the former president’s “1987 radio address to the nation on free and fair trade.”
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Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, arrives for a vote at the US Capitol in Washington, June 28, 2025. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump criticized the ad, which was run by the government of Ontario, Canada, and declared that “all trade negotiations with Canada have hereby ended,” in a post on the Truth Social website.
The latest vote on the tariffs is the second in three decisions from Kaine and several Senate Democrats. Although a resolution ending Trump’s emergency tariff powers in Brazil and Canada is advancing in the Senate, it will likely stall in the House.
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McConnell staked his ground against tariffs in a statement, saying retaliatory tariffs have negatively impacted Kentucky farmers and distillers.
He added: “Tariffs make it more expensive to build and buy in America. The economic damage from trade wars is not the exception to history, but the rule. No skittish reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise.” “This week, I will vote in favor of resolutions ending emergency tariff powers.”