[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 134 (Saturday, August 2, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5487-S5490]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Unanimous Consent Request--S. 1593
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, as if in legislative session and
notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee
on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 1593 and the
Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be
considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no
intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this is a
conversation that we had only about a month ago about tariffs. I find
it interesting that we are having this conversation again because since
the last time we spoke--and I want to remind my colleague from
Massachusetts that I praised him heavily the last time for his position
on voting against the United States-China normalization act when he was
in Congress 25 years ago because I believe that that bill is what set
America on a very dark path toward deindustrialization. Had his
colleagues listened to him, we would be in a different place.
But I thought what I would do today is read some comments from some
of my constituents in Ohio because there are a lot of opinions here. So
let's see. What do real business owners who deal with this situation
think about every day?
Let me start with Dr. Nick Jarmoszuk. He is the CEO of a company in
Lorain, OH, called Skylift.
I asked him: Hey, Doc, what do you think about tariffs? How is it
affecting your business in Lorain, OH?
To remind my colleagues, Lorain, OH, is a lot like, maybe, some of
the areas of South Boston. These were once great, thriving, working-
class communities that have been gutted.
He was happy to respond, and he said: America's trade imbalance with
the rest of the world is something that has been festering for a long
time. It is a good thing to address. The longer you leave it, the
tougher it is to fix.
He said he would not be hurt by the severe 145-percent tariff on
China. It was then at that level. Now, as everybody knows, it is at 30
percent because the company uses components that are manufactured in
the United States. If most people did that, we would be in a better
place, he said. The complaints you get are from Wall Street, which
wants instant gratification. We don't.
I thought that was a good comment.
Here is Belinda Durham, also from Lorain, OH. She is a used car
dealer.
She says: The companies that produce in foreign countries should have
to pay for taking jobs away from the United States. I think this stuff
should be made here.
Kent Savage, the CEO of Velocity Concept Development Group, an
engineering and manufacturing company in Cambridge, OH: What will come
out of the trade war is something more equitable than the system we had
before Liberation Day. There wasn't just a level playing field before.
Jack Schron is an amazing entrepreneur in Cleveland, OH. He is the
president of a company called Jergens, Inc., not to be confused with
the lotion. It is a tool manufacturer: Trump's tariffs have disrupted
global trade and the American economy. Yet those same new rules are
making these manufacturing goods more price-competitive with imports
for the first time in many years. We are swamped. We are running 24
hours a day, 7 days a week, in both Chicago and Cleveland, said Jack
Schron, which makes manufacturing tools, including industrial
screwdrivers, clamps, and hoists.
Schron says that his factories in Ohio and in Illinois are going
gangbusters, partly owing to the new orders from customers who are
looking to avoid paying import tariffs and partly because of increased
demand over the last 18 months from the defense industry.
Let me just tell the Presiding Officer a little bit about Jergens
because he may not know about this company.
It is right in the city core of Cleveland. I was there about 2 weeks
ago at a facility right near it called MAGNET. It is a tech incubator
in Cleveland, OH. These people who go to MAGNET, to the core site, whom
I saw who end up going to work at Jergens, were formerly incarcerated
citizens or were people who, if not for the opportunity to go work at
Jergens, would have no other ability to get a good, family-sustaining
wage job.
Let me just repeat what Jack Schron said: Business is going
gangbusters.
I am perplexed why my colleague, who 25 years ago was on the right
side of this issue, is saying we have to block deindustrialization and
that we have to make things here in America. That actually is a comment
that would have been made in this Chamber in the late 1950s, early
1960s by one of your great Democratic colleagues. I think that person,
today, would be a member of the Republican Party of John Fitzgerald
Kennedy, who believed in the power of advocating for the working class.
Let me just say one other quote here. Donny Chaplin, president of
Grand River Rubber & Plastics in Ashtabula, OH--snow country. This is a
place where, if it doesn't snow 24 inches on a Monday, it is considered
a bad day. Donny said that he has seen a rush--a rush--of new inquiries
and orders. Two previous customers who had switched to Chinese
suppliers a few years ago came back in recent days wanting to buy
rubber gaskets from Grand River again or for the plastic pail gaskets
they manufacture.
Three manufacturers of oil filters also got in touch, as they are
wanting to shift their businesses from China, with two already placing
orders.
Altogether, the new business will be worth about $5 million a year.
Now, look, at $5 million a year, that isn't the kind of company that
gets a lot of attention here in Washington, DC, but I will tell you, in
Ashtabula, OH, it makes a big difference. These are good jobs.
I thank President Trump, Secretary Lutnick, Secretary Bessent, and
Ambassador Greer for their incredible work in putting together the most
unbelievable trade deals that we have ever seen.
I could go on--I have pages of quotes--but I will save my colleague
from having to listen to all of them.
Here is the summary: We have a 30-percent tariff on China. That is a
great move. It is something that my colleague supported 25 years ago
when they started to block that. We have a tariff at 15 percent from
the EU. Our products can now go into the EU with no tariffs, a
phenomenal deal.
With Japan, we have a historic investment in America of $550 billion
and in South Korea a historic investment in America.
My former career was in the retail automobile business. I have talked
to every CEO of every car company on Earth, and they all tell me the
same thing: We are bringing more production to America. Instead of
celebrating that, we are here trying to reverse course.
On top of that, a couple of other things are happening.
No. 1, we are getting record levels of tariff revenue--almost $150
billion into the U.S. Treasury from tariffs. Yet inflation has not
ticked up at all. In fact, it is at the lowest point in 4 years.
[[Page S5488]]
I want to just throw one more statistic up--two more statistics up--
that haven't been talked about.
So this is data right from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The red
line is employment from foreign-born citizens. The blue line is
employment from native-born Americans. Since the beginning of the year,
employment for foreign-born citizens has actually dropped while
employment for American--native-born Americans--has gone up. That is a
great result.
One other thing: Government employment has dropped, and private
sector employment has gone up, which is another really important
result.
And how does it all boil down? What is the conclusion?
Real wages--real wages--are up almost 4 percent, eclipsing inflation
for the first time since the beginning of the first Trump
administration.
What does that mean?
It means that people feel like they are getting ahead. They don't
feel like fast food is a luxury. They feel like they have a little room
here. This is because of the incredible work of this administration.
I know that my colleagues like to do a lot of shirts-and-skins
exercise, like we are doing here on a beautiful Saturday morning in
Washington, DC, where it seems like the temperature is always the same
because we are always in this Chamber, confirming nominees through the
most difficult process in Senate history.
But here is what we do know: We should be celebrating and thanking
President Trump for having the steel backbone to have negotiated these
incredible trade deals that are a massive--massive--victory to the
American people.
I sat where the Presiding Officer sat while I listened to speech
after speech after speech in early April. What did every speech have in
common? The world was going to end. It was the apocalypse because of
Liberation Day. What has been the result? A record stock market, low
inflation, real wage growth, and the growth of native-born American
employment. Small businesses love these policies.
For that reason, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, you know, I am very troubled that the
Senator from Ohio has objected because, obviously, what I am trying to
do here on the Senate floor is to make it possible for there to be an
exemption for small businesses in our country. Small businesses are 97
percent of our businesses, and they are 30 percent of all companies
that engage in trade.
Right now, small businesses are caught in a crossfire. They are
seeing this chaotic world of tariffs that the President is engaging in
absolutely ripple through their business plans. And it is all across
our Nation.
The reason that I have risen today as the ranking member on the Small
Business and Entrepreneurship Committee is to draw the attention to
Main Street being turned into ``Pain Street'' all across our country.
Big companies, they are in a position where they can forward order by
6 months the inventory which they need. They can do planning that is
absolutely outside of the capacity of a small business in our country.
Small businesses live week to week, month to month, and they are,
right now, trying to plan for what the future might look like. It
changes day to day, and it changes product to product, depending upon
which country President Trump is playing games with on that particular
day, minute--just impulsive commentary out of the President.
There is, without question, an impact on small businesses, because
that recklessness is being felt by small businesses. These rising
prices are affecting them disproportionately.
In response to the President's dramatic tariff escalation, on
Thursday night--which is going to go down in history; it is going to go
down in history, Thursday night, as one of the most important economic
days in the history of our country. My goal was to just seek unanimous
consent for my Small Business Liberation Act to be put in place, which
exempts small businesses from the tariff wars. It gets them out of the
crossfire.
When he was running for President, Donald Trump said:
Starting on day one, we will end inflation and [we will]
make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of
all goods.
Yet after 6 months in office, things have gotten more expensive, as
evidenced by Thursday's concerning inflation reading. That is true
whether you are buying supplies to run a business like a restaurant, a
store, or a small factory, or you are a consumer shopping for everyday
items like groceries or clothing or shoes or school supplies for your
kids.
Parents are going to be out in the next few weeks buying the school
supplies, buying new clothing for their kids. And the prices have
already gone up, and they are going to be going up higher. We are going
to see the same thing when people are out buying things before
Thanksgiving, buying items before Christmas. Prices are going up, and
it is going to be rippling through our economy.
Now, with yesterday's very discouraging jobs report, we see the
terrible bind in which the President has left our country.
What was Trump's reaction to yesterday's very, very disappointing
jobs report? It wasn't to end his chaotic policies, which are casting a
cloud over our economy for the last 4 months; it was to fire the
Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was just her job and
all of those dedicated employees to bring the news to the President.
Instead of accepting it and deciding to adjust his economic policies,
he just fired the person who brought the news, fired the messenger of
the news--by the way, leaving economists, on a bipartisan basis, across
the country to be criticizing the President over the last 24 years,
because they rely upon the accuracy of those numbers.
Economic data does not lie. Donald Trump does lie. He lies about
almost everything.
In an ordinary world, a poor jobs report might cause the Fed to lower
interest rates. The Fed has a dual mandate: maximum employment and
price stability at the same time. But because of the President's
chaotic tariff policies, the Federal Reserve can't lower rates without
risking making inflation even worse. And inflation is increasing.
Without tariffs, lowering interest rates might be an easy call.
Rising unemployment and weak job numbers would mean cutting rates. But
the Fed can't ignore the extraordinary amount of uncertainty and
confusion the President's trade war has injected into the economy,
especially with regard to prices.
The New York Times wrote this week:
Mr. Powell emphasized that there was still substantial
uncertainty about how much more consumer prices will rise in
response to Mr. Trump's tariffs . . . [following] a notable
jump in inflation in June.
Chairman Powell knows what every small business owner in America
knows: Tariffs drive up costs. He has watched, along with the rest of
us, as they have risen since President Trump took office, and he knows
that so long as the threat of tariffs hangs over this Nation, they are
likely to increase even further.
This is just a sales tax that he is imposing on every good coming
into our country. And that price is then reflected in an evaluation of
the increase in inflation. It is pretty simple. So you can't, in any
way, argue that there is not a direct correlation, a direct
relationship.
The President would have you believe this doesn't matter. But that
just shows how little he cares about how much businesses and families
have to pay for the things which they need.
So on Thursday, we saw Chairman Powell's predictions about rising
costs borne out with the latest inflation reading, which showed the
price of goods across industries moving in the wrong direction due to
tariffs.
But you don't have to read the Wall Street Journal to know things are
more expensive than they were before the President launched his trade
war. Just talk to the owner of your local small business. Ask them if
their supply costs are going up. Ask them if they know what has been
happening since the President started whipsawing the economy on
Liberation Day--or what should really be called Obliteration Day--for
Main Street across the country and the customers of Main Street.
The unemployment rate is going up. How can small business owners be
hiring new people if they are uncertain
[[Page S5489]]
about what that tariff environment is going to be?
Take coffee. Just take coffee, for example, which the President seems
to think we should tax. Only 1 percent of coffee Americans consume is
grown in the United States--in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, to be precise.
Onshoring coffee, like many other products we use every day--bananas
are another good example--is not an option. We have to import it.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, coffee prices have
already gone up 30 percent compared to this time last year, and that is
before we see the 50-percent tariff the President is threatening Brazil
with in the hope that he can pressure--Trump can pressure--Brazil, the
supreme court of Brazil, into dropping the case against coup-plotter
Jair Bolsonaro inside of the country of Brazil as a part of the
domestic political scene in Brazil. Trump wants to use tariffs on
Brazil as a way of influencing their judicial system.
Who is going to pay the price? Well, the people who are going to pay
the price are the people who buy coffee in the United States of
America. He wants to impose a 50-percent tariff on Brazil. Brazil
imports account for one-third of the coffee consumed in the United
States, so this additional tariff is going to make for a particularly
bitter brew of coffee for American consumers. ``Good to the last drop''
this is not.
Similarly, restaurants are seeing the costs of their ingredients rise
and grocery stores are paying more to stock their shelves. Grocery
prices were 2.4 percent higher than a year ago. But the Yale Budget Lab
expects food costs to rise by an additional 3.4 percent in the short
run.
Fresh produce could go up as much as 6.9 percent in the coming months
because of tariffs. For the cost of clothing, that increase is a
staggering 37.5 percent. And keep in mind that all of these forecasts
were made before the President unleashed a slew of new tariffs on
Thursday night.
What about small manufacturers that the President claims he wants to
save? Well, they can't afford to purchase the equipment and materials
they need because their expenses are rising as well.
According to the Institute of Supply Management, the cost of
manufacturing materials increased by 17 percent. The cost of
manufacturing materials increased by 17 percent during the first 6
months of this year.
Over the past 3 months, we have lost 37,000 manufacturing jobs. Can I
say that? Trump says he wants to return manufacturing to America. In
the last 3 months, we have lost 37,000 manufacturing jobs.
This would suggest that tariffs are setting domestic manufacturing
back and not moving it forward.
The Trump tariffs will disproportionately affect low-income
individuals, women, and minorities by increasing costs on household
goods that these groups spend a large portion of their income on,
including clothes and groceries and household appliances.
By the way, in general, women and minorities are not running big
businesses in America. They are over here in small businesses. That is
where minorities are. That is where Black and Brown entrepreneurs are.
That is where women are. They are in small businesses. So they are not
only going to be disproportionately harmed, those small businesses, but
then consumers who are poor, they are going to be hurt.
As we look past the summer and into the fall, I want everyone to
think about where this continued economic insanity is leading us.
Rising prices will mean that parents will have to spend more to buy
clothes and shoes for their kids as they head back to school. It will
mean putting food on the table is a lot more expensive. It will mean
the holiday season is a lot less joyful when we have to cut back on
gifts for our families. And for small businesses, it will mean they
will have to choose between stocking their shelves and paying their
workers. This is tragic because it is completely avoidable.
It is time for us to stand up to the President and end this tariff
madness for small businesses in our country, for ordinary Americans in
our country before it becomes more and more unaffordable for those
small business owners and it becomes more and more unaffordable for
their customers.
That is why I ask unanimous consent for my Small Business Liberation
Act to be passed here on the floor because that bill would provide
small business relief from Trump's disastrous, destructive small
business-killing tariffs that have absolutely turned Main Street into
Pain Street all across our Nation.
Small businesses are crying out for some certainty and stability
after 4 months of chaos and confusion. We must stand up for them and
grant them the relief which they are looking for.
And I am joined by the national Chamber of Commerce in asking for
that relief. This is a letter which I have in my hand from the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce to Secretary Bessent and Secretary Lutnick.
Here is what they say. They say:
The Chamber requests the administration take immediate
action to save America's small businesses and stave off a
recession. Specifically, while you continue to negotiate, we
are asking that the administration immediately use its tariff
flexibility to implement a tariff exclusion process that:
Provides an automatic exclusion from the new tariffs for
any small business importer.
This is the Chamber of Commerce speaking:
Small businesses do not have the margin or the capital
reserves to sustain the increased tariffs, nor do they have
the ability to quickly modify supply chains.
That is what my unanimous consent was all about. Just get these
businesses, these small businesses, out of this economic war. Preserve
them. Otherwise, those are the businesses that are going to,
unfortunately, experience an extinction experience.
Those are the businesses that are going to be laying off people,
increasingly, in large numbers.
So from my perspective, this is without question a very important
motion on the floor. The Senator from Ohio has objected to exempting
small businesses from the tariff regime, and I think ultimately we are
going to see that those small businesses are the economic canaries in
the mine shaft, that they are the ones who are suffering now. We are
seeing it already in the inflationary numbers and in the higher
unemployment rates and in the economic slowdown that has been reported
just in the last week.
That is all I have been asking of the Republicans--just get these
small businesses out of this fight. So it is very, very disheartening
to me to know that the Republicans are standing here and objecting to
that protection for small businesses in our country.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. MORENO. Mr. President, I just want to clear the irony here that
the person who is speaking right now has been a small business owner my
entire life, and my colleague has never owned a business. So I know
exactly what drives small businesses.
I have read many statements from small business owners that are
thankful to President Trump for his tariff policies because what it is
doing is it is bringing manufacturing back to America.
Now, I will acknowledge that there is a ``Pain Street,'' but it is
not on Main Street; it is on Martha's Vineyard, where the globalists
and the climate change cultists are waiting for their Senators to
arrive after we leave here in Washington, DC, to make the annual
pilgrimage in which they talk about the plight of the little people
while they fly there on their private jets and enjoy caviar in their
mansions.
Let me tell you what is happening in Chillicothe, OH. They are happy
that there are more Kenworth trucks being made than Freightliners in
Mexico. They are happy that the products that are made by working-class
Ohioans are now on a level playing field by jobs that were shipped
overseas, chasing slave labor that was enriching and building those
mansions in Martha's Vineyard.
Now, it is ironic, too, and quite a shift, because there was a day
when Democrats loved to advocate for the working man. I mentioned JFK.
Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, has been a
staunch supporter of President Trump's tariff policies despite
campaigning aggressively against President Trump because he didn't know
if he could trust him. But he
[[Page S5490]]
knows now he can, and he knows that President Trump is actually putting
the interests of the American worker above everything else.
Another Sean--apparently you have to be named ``Shawn'' to run a
union--another Sean, Sean O'Brien, head of the Teamsters--I am young
enough but still remember that maybe the unions were the ones that
supported Democrats, but here we are.
Sean O'Brien says:
There's no secret what our position is as a union on
tariffs.
He supports them because he knows those tariffs will produce more
economic activity here in America.
So this is a very clear situation. My Democratic colleagues kept us
in this Chamber for 27 hours in a row to block a bill that prevented
the largest tax increase in American history. Had that bill not passed,
I will tell you what would have happened to small businesses. They
would have been destroyed. And there wasn't a single Democrat that
voted to prevent that tax increase--27 hours, in fact, to block that
tax increase. They blocked no income tax on tips, no income tax on
overtime.
Now, on Martha's Vineyard, they don't worry about income tax on tips
or overtime because they probably don't even pay it when they go out,
and maybe they don't even like to pay it to their employees.
They blocked a $2,200 child tax credit that would have gone to zero.
And maybe on Martha's Vineyard, they don't care about child tax
credits, but in Chillicothe, OH, in Coshocton, OH, and in Lorain, OH,
they absolutely do.
They blocked $1,000 Trump accounts--money that will go into an index
fund that can grow so that when that baby becomes an adult, they have a
nest egg, finally, so they don't have to live in their parents'
basement and they can afford a home or a car.
By the way, let me just clear this misconception up--two things--and
I will end so that we can get moving today to confirm the nominees that
President Trump deserves.
No. 1--and my colleague in Massachusetts may not know this because he
may not be somebody who is in the automobile market quite often--car
prices are down. Let me repeat that again. Car prices are down this
year. That means people are paying less money for cars right now than
they were at the beginning of the year.
And guess what. Fifty-one percent of the cars sold in this country at
the beginning of the year were made in this country. Now it is 56, and
we are heading right to the sixties, and we are not going to stop. When
I was a kid, that number used to be in the eighties.
So these tariff policies have been an incredible success.
Let me just speak to the chamber of commerce as a former small
business owner. To say that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an advocate
for small business is like saying Hamas is an advocate for Israel's
best interests.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I request that I be allowed to finish my
unanimous consent request.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The unanimous consent request is pending.
There is still time remaining on the nomination.
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I would just say this. Right now, here is
what American small businesses know: Unemployment is going up.
Inflation is going up. Tariffs are going up.
It is a tax. It is a sales tax that all Americans are paying. It is
having a profoundly negative impact on our Nation. People are having
Pepto Bismol moments in the marketplace, on Main Street, across our
country. They are having Maalox moments in the marketplace. Their
stomachs are churning as they look at all of this economic data.
Lutnick and Bessent are the Smoot-Hawley of the 21st century. We
already did this once with Smoot-Hawley. They are repeating history. As
Mark Twain said, there is no educational benefit to the second kick of
a mule. This country got kicked in the behind by Smoot-Hawley, and
Lutnick, Bessent, and President Trump are about to have that second
kick affect every American in a profoundly negative way.
I thank the Presiding Officer for granting me that unanimous consent
1 minute in the continuation of debate.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.