[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 59 (Wednesday, April 2, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2113-S2114]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1185

  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise to support my colleague Senator 
Kaine's joint resolution to terminate the Trump order placing blanket 
tariffs on products Americans buy from Canada.
  I am going to start by saying, as the Ranking Democrat on the Senate 
Finance Committee, I am always struck by how much doubletalk there is 
about trade. So let's be clear as we start this part of the discussion.
  Tariffs are taxes on things we buy from other countries. The bottom 
line is, those taxes make it more expensive for Americans to buy those 
products. No other country pays the tariffs. Let me repeat that. No 
other country pays the tariffs. The consumer pays the tariff. So if 
somebody tells you they can do tariffs and do it without raising 
prices--I am sorry, but anybody who says that with a straight face is 
basically taking advantage of you.
  Every credible economist, every automaker, every business on the 
record has said that Trump's trade taxes are going to make things more 
expensive for Americans.
  Ronald Reagan's favorite economist, Art Laffer, just released a study 
showing auto tariffs are going to raise car prices by $4,700. The Yale 
Budget Lab estimates that the full Trump tariff scheme is going to cost 
an average family thousands of dollars a year.
  It is one thing if tariffs are imposed with a good strategy, like 
decreasing sales in the United States by raising prices to punish 
countries that cheat on trade and changing their behavior so that U.S. 
workers get a fair shake.
  I have consistently supported targeted tariffs in the past as a tool 
to fight back against trade cheating, especially by China. When China 
was stealing America's trade secrets, subsidizing cheap solar panels, 
and then dumping them here to drive U.S. manufacturers out of business, 
we were shouting from the rooftops for more tariffs on Chinese goods.
  But Canada is not China. Canada is America's closest ally, not a 
rival. Making everything Americans buy from Canada more expensive for 
some bogus reason is, in the words of the Wall Street Journal ``the 
dumbest trade war in history.''
  There are 8 million American jobs that depend on trade with Canada. 
Canada is the biggest export market for 32 States. It provides raw 
materials and potash that so often farmers need to grow their crops. 
U.S. farmers can't replace 90 percent of potash that comes from Canada, 
definitely not overnight. The only choice is higher prices--again, 
higher prices paid for by Americans.
  So the stuff we buy from Canada gets more expensive. And on top of 
that, in response, Canada has already slapped tariffs on a whole host 
of crops, ag products, dairy, alcohol, manufactured goods. The list 
goes on and on.
  Canadian grocery stores pulled U.S. products off the shelves. Our 
small businesses and farmers are losing sales as we speak because of 
the weird obsession in the Trump administration with attacking our 
northern neighbor.
  Plunging our economy into a recession because of the Trump desire to 
annex Canada is just bizarre--bizarre even by Washington, DC, 
standards.
  Congress has delegated far too much of its authority to the executive 
branch, and it is far past time for the Congress to take it back. In 
1962 and 1974, Congress passed laws handing the President major 
portions of our constitutional power over tariffs. It is time to 
reverse that trend. Those dates I mentioned were before my time, but I 
want everybody to know, on our watch, I think this has got to be a 
bipartisan concern. We have got to take these powers back, because if 
Republicans say it is not their fault that Trump is destroying our 
economy, why not do something like this to restore the power of 
Congress to set tariffs?
  I am going to close by addressing the bogus claim of the Trump 
administration that tariffs are actually intended to stop fentanyl 
trafficking from Canada. Let me be clear. Our immigration system needs 
reform, and the fentanyl crisis is a serious issue.
  Oregon is no stranger to the devastating effects it has wreaked on 
our economy communities. The reality is, there is no crisis at the 
northern border. Less than 0.1 percent of fentanyl entering the United 
States comes from Canada. Fentanyl seizures at the northern border are 
down over 97 percent from July 2024.
  I think almost everybody understands that Canada is not the issue 
here. Instead of coming up with real solutions to get fentanyl off the 
streets and out of our communities, Donald Trump has decided he would 
rather make threats and tariff our closest allies.
  My colleague from Alabama is on the floor, and we are going to have a 
little bit of a discussion. We just talked about how we are going to 
handle it. But I want to be clear. If Donald Trump and the Republicans 
wanted to address fentanyl in an effective way, they would pass my bill 
to limit the millions of low-value packages that come into the United 
States from China and elsewhere. Getting a handle on these so-called 
``de minimis'' imports will help our border agents detect the illicit 
imports of things like fentanyl and pill presses before they reach 
communities in the United States.
  So with that, Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask 
unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from 
further consideration of S. 1185 and the Senate

[[Page S2114]]

proceed to its immediate consideration, the bill be considered read a 
third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made 
and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. TUBERVILLE. Reserving the right to object. The media, for some 
reason, is in full meltdown mode after President Trump declared today 
``Liberation Day.'' Only my Democratic colleagues and the media, the 
globalist media, would find a reason to be mad about that.
  I am sadly convinced that my colleagues and the woke media would 
rather President Trump fail than achieve a goal to help the United 
States of America and the taxpayers.
  President Trump's views on tariffs, they aren't complicated. He 
believes, as I do, that America has been ripped off by unfair trade 
deals for decades and simply wants a level playing field. We have to 
change directions. What we are doing is not working.
  U.S. catfish and shrimp producers have faced some of the worst blows, 
for example. Vietnam is dumping billions--I repeat, billions--of pounds 
of catfish, and India is dumping billions of pounds of shrimp every 
year into U.S. markets, flooding the markets and reducing the price for 
our quality domestic products. It is devastating.
  We need to put a reciprocal tariff on these countries to protect our 
American producers.
  I get calls every day. Whether it is cabinets, whether it is produce, 
whether it is fish, it makes no difference. Our people are going broke.
  I recognize that tariff actions may cause reciprocal tariffs from 
other countries. We need to take that in stride.
  In this country, we had a party for 249 years. The United States has 
put that party on. The party needs to continue, but all the other 
countries that have been built off the American taxpayers, such as the 
Middle East, such as Europe, such as China, they need to start bringing 
gifts to the party because the American taxpayer can't afford it any 
longer.
  We are $37 trillion in debt, and the only way to pay that down is to 
force other people to help us. The American taxpayer can't afford 
it. As a result, American jobs have been sent overseas because of all 
the domestic problems that we are having for labor, for things that 
stand out for our manufacturers.

  We have to get manufacturing back in this country. The days are over. 
President Trump is 100 percent committed, folks--100 percent. He is 
going to do whatever it takes to usher in a golden age for the American 
economy.
  By the way, just the threat of President Trump's tariffs has already 
led India, Vietnam, and Israel to proactively drop significantly and 
lower tariffs against the United States before it has really even 
started.
  It doesn't matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat; we should 
all be united in wanting economic policies that put American farmers, 
producers, businesses, and manufacturers first.
  So, Mr. President, for that reason, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I listened very carefully to my colleague 
from Alabama, and I don't believe my colleague used the word 
``fentanyl,'' and that is what we are concerned about in the Pacific 
Northwest. We are concerned that fentanyl has hit our country and our 
region like a wrecking ball.
  So maybe when this all gets sorted out, he will support my bill to 
crack down on fentanyl everywhere through reforms of this de minimis 
issue. And I would just say, for purposes of our discussion now, I 
understand--and we all await the announcement, I gather, sometime late 
this afternoon--the Trump administration only is going to address de 
minimis shipments from China and nowhere else.
  We have to make this comprehensive. My colleague serving as the 
Presiding Officer knows what it is like in the West with fentanyl 
hitting us so hard. If you just do it with China, Chinese companies are 
going to circumvent the rules and transship through other countries.
  That is why I felt so strongly about a comprehensive solution to get 
at this fentanyl, this poison, that has hit us so hard, because if you 
just go to one country, what you are going to have is something called 
merchandise laundering. We saw it when we did an investigation in the 
committee.
  A Chinese company ships its product through an intermediary in 
Vietnam or another third country. The intermediary then slaps a ``Made 
in Vietnam'' sticker on the Chinese product and falsely labels the 
product, and they can easily evade the Chinese product restrictions. 
And with millions of shipments coming in from China, there is no way 
for Customs and Border Protection to police Chinese products 
transshipped through third companies.
  This is not a new gimmick. Chinese companies have been circumventing 
tariffs all this time with products like steel and solar panels. I have 
been bird-dogging this issue since I passed the Enforce and Protect Act 
nearly a decade ago.
  My de minimis bill that I hope to get bipartisan support for would 
stop the flood of low-value packages from all countries on a global 
scale. That is the only way to deal with this problem--not create, as 
my colleague from Alabama would do, a gigantic game of Whack-A-Mole.
  So I hope we will be back on this floor doing something comprehensive 
to fight the scourge of fentanyl, and I proposed it with legislation.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.