{"id":8695,"date":"2025-04-30T23:23:48","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T23:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-republicans-block-rebuke-of-trumps-tariffs\/"},"modified":"2025-04-30T23:23:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T23:23:48","slug":"senate-republicans-block-rebuke-of-trumps-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/senate-republicans-block-rebuke-of-trumps-tariffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Republicans block rebuke of Trump\u2019s tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A Democratic effort to rebuff President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping global tariffs failed Wednesday, thanks to two absent senators.<\/p>\n

Senators voted 49-49 to reject the national emergency Trump used to impose tariffs of between 10 and 50 percent on many of the United States\u2019 largest trading partners. It came on the same day the Commerce Department revealed that the economy shrank in the year’s first quarter<\/a>, largely due to Trump\u2019s trade policies.<\/p>\n

Three Republicans joined Democrats in rejecting the tariffs: Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Paul was a cosponsor of the resolution with Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.<\/p>\n

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) were missing from the vote, leaving supporters of the resolution short of a majority. Whitehouse was absent because he was returning from the Republic of Korea, where he represented the U.S. at a conference on protecting the ocean from threats like climate change, pollution and overfishing. <\/p>\n

McConnell, the former Republican leader, missed several votes Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“The Senator has been consistent in opposing tariffs and that a trade war is not in the best interest of American households and businesses,” said David Popp, a spokesperson for McConnell. “He believes that tariffs are a tax increase on everybody.”<\/p>\n

The vote was largely symbolic: The House has approved a rule to block a vote<\/a> on the resolution and Trump has threatened to veto<\/a> such a measure if it makes it to his desk. Still, the resolution’s failure hands Trump a victory as his administration tries to maintain support for the aggressive tariff platform among increasingly nervous Republicans.<\/p>\n

Paul said he felt the vote was more about the debate than the result, because he knew it wasn\u2019t likely to clear Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost Republicans are just going along with it, but many of them are quietly still on the other side of this,\u201d Paul said. \u201cThey just aren’t willing to say anything yet. But I think if we went through another quarter of negative growth and or another scare in the marketplace, I think there will be more visible voices against the tariffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even lawmakers who defended Trump\u2019s tariffs acknowledged the uncertainty that has come with Trump\u2019s attempts to upend the global trading order, an effort that has tanked consumer sentiment in the U.S. and spooked many businesses and investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate that many of us in this chamber have heard from constituents concerned about the economic impact of the tariffs,\u201d said Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee that oversees trade policy. \u201cAll of us are watching this issue closely and working with the administration to find ways to minimize its impact on Americans. We should also be working with the administration to address a shared objective: more opportunities for Americans in foreign markets and an end to discriminatory actions in foreign markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lisa Kashinsky and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Democratic effort to rebuff President Donald Trump\u2019s sweeping global tariffs failed Wednesday, thanks to two absent senators. Senators voted 49-49 to reject the national emergency Trump used to impose tariffs of between 10 and 50 percent on many of the United States\u2019 largest trading partners. It came on the same day the Commerce Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}