| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Tariffs all this time with products like steel and solar panels. | ||
| I've been bird-dogging this issue since I passed the Enforcement Protect Act nearly a year ago. | ||
| My de minimis bill that I hope we'll 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'll be back on this floor doing something comprehensive to fight the scourge of fentanyl, and I proposed it with legislation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, I yield the floor. | |
| President, thank you. | ||
| I rise today following my colleague from Maine to talk about Senate Joint Resolution 37, which we believe will come up for a vote later this afternoon, possibly somewhere between 6 and 7 o'clock. | ||
| I am proud to have introduced this resolution a few weeks back together with a group of bipartisan senators, many of whom will take the floor this afternoon to speak about it. | ||
| Let me just first talk about the fact that this resolution is a little bit unusual in the terms of Senate procedure. | ||
| There are not many things that a single senator can file and then be guaranteed a floor vote. | ||
| In fact, there's only three or four such procedures. | ||
| This resolution is filed pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which was the act used by President Trump to declare the Canadian emergency that is the subject of my resolution. | ||
| The IEPA statute is an old statute. | ||
| It's been around for quite a while. | ||
| And I'll just state at the outset that IIPA, the act that the President has used to declare an emergency and impose tariffs, is an act that was designed to be used against adversaries. | ||
| Congress wanted to give the president tools to deal with adversaries, nations that were enemies, cartels, rogue states, dictators. | ||
| IEPA was not designed to be used against allies. | ||
| IEPA says nothing about tariffs. | ||
| It does not say that the President's actions against adversaries should include tariffs. | ||
| The administration's use of this Emergency Powers Act to go against an ally is pretty unusual. | ||
| It's not unprecedented. | ||
| The President did it in the first term when he imposed IEPA tariffs against both Canada and the EU. | ||
| But it is important to know that this is generally a statute that was designed to counter adversaries. | ||
| And I stand here strong in the belief that Canada is not an adversary. | ||
| They're an ally. | ||
| Canada is not the 51st state. | ||
| They're a sovereign nation. | ||
| And Canada is not an emergency for the United States. | ||
| Are there differences of opinion between the United States and Canada? | ||
| Sure, there are. | ||
| It just so happens in the trade space, we have a state-of-the-art trade deal negotiated by President Trump and his team, the USMCA, that was adopted by nearly a 90 to 10 vote in this body that gives us the ability, when we have differences with this friend and ally Canada, to work them out. | ||
| And it's unfortunate in my view that we're using an act instead of going to the USMCA, we're using an act designed to counter adversaries to impose these tariffs. | ||
| I want to talk about tariffs. | ||
| I want to talk about the President's rationale for imposing the tariffs. | ||
| And then I want to talk about the importance of this resolution and the many stakeholders outside this body who are supporting Senate Joint Resolution 37. | ||
| First on tariffs. | ||
| President Trump's aides have basically admitted that this is a sales tax, a new sales tax. | ||
| The tariff revenue will hit everyday people by making the cost of their goods go up. | ||
| This is a CNN headline for a couple of days ago. | ||
| Trump aid says tariffs will raise $6 trillion. | ||
| That is a reference to Peter Navarro, which would be the largest tax hike in United States history. | ||
| Now, to be fair, this is the total tariff effect, not just the Canada tariff effect. | ||
| It is Canada and China and Mexico and potentially other nations. | ||
| But what we are likely to see today with the tariff announcement, it will be the largest tax hike in United States history. | ||
| Many have been writing about the challenges of tariffs and this tax hike. | ||
| From CNBC, consumer confidence in where the economy is headed hits a 12-year low. | ||
| And this was an economy that was extremely strong just two months ago on President Trump's inauguration day. | ||
| It was a very, very strong economy, not a perfect economy. | ||
| But since that time, we've seen volatility in the stock market. | ||
| We've seen growing inflation. | ||
| We've seen reducing consumer confidence. | ||
| We've seen some suggestions of slowing economic growth, even negative economic growth from some. | ||
| And that is due in large part to the prospect of this national sales tax tariffs to the degree of $6 trillion, but also somewhat to the chaos about whether and when and how they will be implemented. | ||
| Other economists have also written a recent article in the Washington Post talks about the market's grim view of tariff shenanigans. | ||
| Markets have plummeted since Trump announced new levies on Canada, Mexico, and China, erasing nearly all gains since his election. | ||
| The tariffs are still likely to be economically destructive. | ||
| They will snarl global supply chains, raise costs to consumers, and cause layoffs in industries that depend on imported inputs like steel. | ||
| This means more than just additional pain for consumers, whipsawed by inflation, higher prices on imports, and now the possibility of a recession. | ||
| Tariff shenanigans are shaking up the American economy, creating huge anxiety and already hurting consumers and businesses. | ||
| A recent article in the Wall Street Journal called the Trump tariff effort the dumbest trade war in history. | ||
| And the Wall Street Journal's point was a point that I made earlier that why use IEPA, a statute designed to go after enemies, when we have a trade deal that President Trump negotiated with Canada and Mexico. | ||
| None of this is supposed to happen under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated and signed in his first term. | ||
| And again, I give the President huge credit for this. | ||
| I believe the USMCA vote in President Trump's first term got 89 votes in this chamber. | ||
| That is hard on anything, much less a trade deal. | ||
| What an accomplishment. | ||
| But the USMCA created dispute resolution mechanisms that would make imposition of tariffs unnecessary. | ||
| The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won't make other countries eager to do deals. | ||
| Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions. | ||
| But if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history. | ||
| I've given you challenges in the global economy and in the American economy that are happening because of the trade war. | ||
| Let me now get specific on Virginia. | ||
| I heard my colleague from Maine talk about who is affected in Maine. | ||
| In Virginia, I've been traveling around the state talking to Virginians, and they're very, very worried about these Canadian tariffs. | ||
| And they're not worried in the abstract. | ||
| They saw them in 27, 18, 2018, 2019. | ||
| So they know what happens with tariffs. | ||
| It's an unusual group of businesses in that it is big, small, medium-sized, it's everybody. | ||
| I have a bakery in Northern Virginia, Mom's Apple Pie. | ||
| They have three locations. | ||
| The owner, April, I see some nods. | ||
| There are people here who are mom's apple pie fans. | ||
| It's a great small business bakery. | ||
| Their operations are Leesburg, Occoquan, and Purcellville. | ||
| I was meeting recently with the owner, and she said, you've got to do something about these Canadian tariffs. | ||
| I said, April. | ||
| Now you have three small bakeries. | ||
| Now tell me how the Canadian tariffs hit you. | ||
| And she said, pie tins. | ||
| All of our aluminum pie tins come from Canada. | ||
| If you raise the price of a pie tin by 25%, the price of a pie goes up by a good bit. | ||
| Nobody has to buy apple pies. | ||
| When the price goes up, a whole lot of people will decide they're not going to buy apple pies. | ||
| This is a classic small business that are affected by Canadian tariffs. | ||
| Let's go to the largest businesses. | ||
| We are experts at ship and sub-building in Virginia. | ||
| We manufacture the most sophisticated items that are made on the planet Earth, nuclear carriers and nuclear subs. | ||
| 35% of the steel that goes into ships and subs made for our Navy, for our military, comes from Canada. | ||
| 65% of the aluminum steel come from the U.S., but 35% come from Canada. | ||
| We already, I serve with the presiding officer on the Armed Service, we already are having a hard time producing ships and subs on time on budget. | ||
| Take aluminum and steel and ratchet it up by 20%. | ||
| It's going to get even harder to defend the nation and produce the ships and subs that we need. | ||
| Like Senator Collins talking about her ag sector, ag and forestry is still the biggest industry in Virginia. | ||
| People think of it as high-tech. | ||
| No, ag and forestry is still number one. | ||
| And it is my farmers and foresters that are most concerned about the Canadian tariffs because they saw what happened last time. | ||
| The first thing that happens, you put a tariff on Canadian exports, potash, the ingredient in agriculture fertilizer. | ||
| 80% of potash comes as an import into the United States. | ||
| So that immediately goes up by 25% according to what the president has said he's going to do. | ||
| That hurts farmers very, very badly. | ||
| Second, there's never been a one-sided trade war in the history of the world. | ||
| So when one party puts a tariff on, the other side retaliates. | ||
| And in the first Trump administration, the retaliation was heavily against the ag sector. | ||
| My soybean farmers that were exporting soybeans couldn't export to markets that they were previously able to. | ||
| My apple farmers who export apples to Canada couldn't do it to the same degree and their exports drop and their revenues drop and this is already a low margin business. | ||
| My distillers and wineries and breweries, many of whom find an important part of their revenue might be 10% or 15% or 25% in export markets to the EU, to Canada, to Mexico, suddenly find that retaliatory tariffs price their products out of business. | ||
| I was with Dave Cupertino, who is the founder of Reservoir Distillery in Richmond yesterday. | ||
| And he talked about the fact that even before these tariffs have gone into effect, because President Trump announced them but then delayed them, there's an anger in the Canadian consumer. | ||
| We don't want to buy American products if you're going to treat us this way. | ||
| And he's been told by his distributors in the Alberta province, there will be no American product put on any more shelves because we're so furious at the way we are being treated in this. | ||
| Big businesses, small businesses, Volvo Trucks, one of the largest manufacturers in Appalachian, Virginia, in Dublin, Virginia, they manufacture all of the Volvo over-the-road trucks that you see anywhere in North America. | ||
| They export significantly, significantly to Canada and Mexico. | ||
| They also import source materials from Canada and Mexico. | ||
| The tariffs will increase the cost of their inputs, driving the price of their trucks up, making those trucks less competitive. | ||
| We have a lot of businesses in Virginia that have operations on both sides of the border. | ||
| BWXT in Lynchburg, which is the nation's premier producer of nuclear reactors for ships and subs, as well as nuclear reactors for other possibilities, they have operations in Canada and they ship product back and forth across the line in ways where the tariffs will make it more expensive. | ||
| And so the Virginia effect, and let's be clear, there's another one, the senator talked about tourism. | ||
| We rely on tourism in Virginia. | ||
| We're a top 10 tourism state. | ||
| And we have a lot of Canadian tourists. | ||
| In fact, Canadians are among the most frequent visitors to Virginia Beach, our pristine, wonderful beachfront community. | ||
| Canada tourism is strong. | ||
| Canadian tourism to the United States, air reservations from Canadians coming to the United States are down by 75% because of a feeling that they're not being treated fairly. | ||
| And they're looking at the United States and ally and they're saying, why us? | ||
| And so the effect on the economy, big picture, stock market, inflation, at the kitchen table, the cost of groceries, building supplies come from Canada, a lot of lumber. | ||
| Housing is already too expensive. | ||
| A tariff on lumber coming in from Canada is just going to drive up the cost of any home renovation project or new home construction. | ||
| The tariffs on Canadian automobiles, a lot of the U.S. plated automobiles are made, or at least products are significantly made in Canada. | ||
| Those prices will go up. | ||
| So from the kitchen table of a family to our nation's largest shipbuilders, these tariff shenanigans pose us huge economic risk. | ||
| I go back to a point that was raised in the Wall Street Journal article. | ||
| Why not use the USMCA? | ||
| Why not use the USMCA? | ||
| President Trump negotiated it. | ||
| It was a success. | ||
| It was something that succeeded in a bipartisan way. | ||
| There have been discussions about whether after five or six years the USMCA should be renegotiated. | ||
| I think that's fine. | ||
| We renegotiated NAFTA. | ||
| President Trump made it better. | ||
| If five or six years of operating under USMCA has taught us ways that can be made better, that's fine too. | ||
| But when you establish a treaty with an ally that includes a dispute resolution mechanism, why not use that mechanism instead of reaching for a statute that was designed to punish an adversary and putting massive sales taxes on goods that will make it harder for Americans to economically thrive? | ||
| And so that does raise the question. | ||
| If the USMCA was available, if there are differences of opinion on trade, why is the President imposing tariffs and using an emergency declaration rather than using the MCA? | ||
| And I want to get to that next. | ||
| The President has said there's one reason he's doing this. | ||
| There's one reason for the emergency for labeling Canada through this use of emergency power and adversary, and the reason is fentanyl. | ||
| Fentanyl. | ||
| No one in this chamber and no one here now or in any of the 100 senators would dispute that fentanyl is a massive problem and indeed an emergency. | ||
| The opioid overdose deaths in my state, Alabama, all states, heartbreaking. | ||
| The stories of families who lost their loved ones, heartbreaking. | ||
| I was with a Roanoke earlier this morning, an ESPN reporter who was a gymnast and now works at ESPN, Lauren Keller. | ||
| Lauren's from Roanoke, Virginia. | ||
| She was in her freshman year at Rutgers when she got the call that her mother at age 45 had died. | ||
| Her dad called her. | ||
| She went to the airport. | ||
| She flew home. | ||
| By the time she landed in Roanoke, her dad had died as well, both overdosed on oxycotton opioid-based pain medications. | ||
| So is fentanyl a problem? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Is it an emergency? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Is substance use disorder generally an emergency? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Of course it is. | ||
| That's why we passed, Mr. President, the HALT Fentanyl Bill just about two weeks ago in this chamber, big bipartisan vote. | ||
| That's why we're putting budgetary resources into interdiction technology. | ||
| That's why Senator Ernst and I got a provision in the defense bill two years ago to require more cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico, Mexican military on fentanyl interdiction. | ||
| It is an emergency. | ||
| But fentanyl is not a Canadian emergency. | ||
| And calling it a Canadian emergency and putting the same tariffs on Canadian products as we put on Mexican and Canadian products is an invented emergency, not a real emergency. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| The Trump administration agrees with me on this. | ||
| Even though the President has declared a Canadian fentanyl emergency, there's a biblical statement, I think, about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. | ||
| One of the president's key intelligence advisors, Tulsi Gabbard, appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, and she presented to the Intel Committee an annual assessment required of her office. | ||
| It's called the Annual Threat Assessment. | ||
| Looking at every threat that the U.S. is under globally, who is threatening us militarily, who's threatening us with fentanyl, who's threatening us with cyber attacks, who's threatening us with misinformation. | ||
| And as she presented the report to the committee, one of my colleagues, Senator Heinrich of New Mexico, looked through the report and noticed that Canada wasn't in the report. | ||
| Canada was not even mentioned as a threat in the Trump administration's first annual threat assessment. | ||
| There was even a section in the report specifically about fentanyl. | ||
| Canada wasn't mentioned. | ||
| And so my colleague asked the DNI, I don't see Canada mentioned. | ||
| Canada is not mentioned as a threat, not even as a threat in fentanyl. | ||
| And her testimony to the committee was, you're right, the fentanyl threat is a China and Mexico threat. | ||
| It's not a Canada threat. | ||
| So is there a fentanyl emergency? | ||
| Yes, there is. | ||
| Should action be taken to stop it? | ||
| Yes, there should. | ||
| Might that action even include looking at tariffs against China for sending precursor chemicals into the United States or into Mexico to be manufactured into fentanyl? | ||
| Fair question. | ||
| I haven't challenged the China tariffs. | ||
| Should Mexico be subject to some tough action, possibly including tariffs because of their role in allowing so much fentanyl to come into the United States? | ||
| Very fair question. | ||
| That's why I haven't challenged the Mexico tariffs. | ||
| But even the Trump administration, in their presentation to the Intel Committee, said that Canada was not a fentanyl. | ||
| This is an article from the Globe and Mail, which is the largest daily newspaper in Canada, published in Toronto from last week in the aftermath of Tulsi Gabbard's testimony. | ||
| Canada not mentioned in U.S. threat assessment summary of fentanyl. | ||
| There is a fentanyl emergency, but it's not Canada. | ||
| So let's dig into this a little bit further. | ||
| In 2024, let me tell you how much fentanyl was seized at the southern border of the United States. | ||
| It's slightly over 21,000 pounds of fentanyl. | ||
| Devastating, devastating. | ||
| How about fentanyl seized coming from Canada into the United States? | ||
| Half of that? | ||
| A quarter of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A tenth of it? | |
| About one two-thousandth of it. | ||
| The estimates have been, although there's a new report that's just coming out as I'm speaking on the floor from the Globe and Mail that are saying even these estimates are high, 21,000 pounds from Mexico, 43 pounds from Canada in the entire year of 2024. | ||
| The Toronto Globe and Mail is doing an assessment of the 43 pounds, and here's what they found. | ||
| That 43 pounds is an overstatement. | ||
| The 43 pounds includes fentanyl interdicted in some northern cities like Spokane, Washington, and those were put on the Canadian interdiction stat, even though when we've dug into it, what we've discovered is, even though Spokane's pretty far north, that fentanyl didn't come in from Canada. | ||
| It came in from Mexico. | ||
| And all the people that were arrested as the fentanyl was interdicted in these northern cities were connected to Mexican cartels. | ||
| And so this gives some scale, 21,000 to 43 pounds, and the 43 pounds is dramatically overestimated. | ||
| We think this actual number may be down in a very, very few pounds. | ||
| It's not an emergency from Canada. | ||
| And it's certainly not an emergency that would justify treating Canadian products with exactly the same tariff that we would levy on products from Mexico and from China. | ||
| Mr. President, I think that allies are really important. | ||
| And I think it's wrong to call an ally an adversary. | ||
| Here's an article that appeared in the AP a little bit ago that I just want to read into the record. | ||
| A beloved library that united the U.S. and Canada faces new border restrictions because of the President's emergency declaration. | ||
| This appeared in the Associated Press on March 26, just last week. | ||
| And let me just read this into the record. | ||
| For Allison Howell, her hometown library is more than just a place to borrow a book. | ||
| It's also a unique space where different cultures from the U.S. and Canada have mingled and developed ties for more than a century. | ||
| Howell and others fear that could change under a new regulation implemented by President Donald Trump's administration as tensions continue to rise between the two countries. | ||
| The Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the line between Howellsville Village of Derbyline, Vermont, and the town of Stansted, Quebec. | ||
| The entrance to the imposing brick-style and stone buildings on the U.S. side. | ||
| But an informal agreement between the two countries has allowed Canadians to enter the library without a passport. | ||
| Canadians cross the border on a sidewalk leading directly to the library that is monitored by the U.S. CBP. | ||
| The nearest border checkpoint is not within eyesight of the building. | ||
| Inside the library, there's a line on the floor marking the international border, though residents of both countries have been able to move freely among the stacks. | ||
| But since Tuesday, the only Canadian visitors able to enter on the U.S. side have been cardholders and library staff. | ||
| All others have had to use an emergency exit on the Canadian side. | ||
| Starting October 1, all Canadians will have to enter from their side of the border or pass through a security checkpoint on the U.S. side. | ||
| It's a big change from the honor system arrangement the two countries have always used, users of the library said. | ||
| This feels like one more step building a chasm between these nations, said Howell, who described the library as really special and a real symbol of international cooperation. | ||
| Derby Line is a village of 700 people within the town of Derby, located in the rural Northeast Kingdom section of Vermont. | ||
| Stanstead is a sign of about a town of about 3,000 residents. | ||
| Like many rural border communities in the U.S. and Canada, their economies and cultures are linked, but the ties have become strained under President Trump, who has advanced tariffs and tightened border protections in some communities that rely upon one another. | ||
| Why do this? | ||
| Why do this? | ||
| Like President Trump, I think it's right to say America first. | ||
| But I don't want America alone. | ||
| I don't want an America pushing aside its long-standing allies who have stood with us. | ||
| Canada stood with us at 9-11. | ||
| Canada has stood side by side with U.S. troops in every war we have been in. | ||
| They have fought with our troops. | ||
| They've bled with our troops. | ||
| They've died with our troops in every war since the War of 1812. | ||
| And yet we're going to treat them like an enemy. | ||
| And we're going to make them come through an emergency exit into a library. | ||
| This calls up to mind memories that I have of a South when I was born where certain kind of people couldn't go in the same door as other kind of people. | ||
| This is no way to treat an ally. | ||
| This is no way to treat a friend. | ||
| Mr. President, as I conclude, I see other colleagues here ready to speak. | ||
| I'm happy to say that the Senate Joint Resolution 37 has picked up the support of a whole lot of people that I think are pretty important people outside this chamber. | ||
| This morning, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce weighed in in support of SJ Res 37. | ||
| I'm going to read from the letter that they have sent to senators. | ||
| The tariffs being imposed on imports from Canada and Mexico, America's top two trading partners, are inflicting real harm on American workers, companies, and farmers. | ||
| Tariffs are taxes paid by Americans, and they will quickly increase prices at a time when many are struggling with the cost of living. | ||
| These import taxes are also harming U.S. manufacturers and drawing retaliatory duties, worsening their impact on the economy. | ||
| Further, these tariffs are at odds with the commitments the United States made in the landmark U.S. MCA, which was negotiated by the first Trump administration. | ||
| The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports Senate Joint Resolution 37, and they join a number of other organizations. | ||
| The AFL-CIO. | ||
| That's threading a needle, Mr. President, when I get the AFL-CAO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the same page on a matter of such importance. | ||
| The United Steel Workers, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, the National Retail Federation. | ||
| Retailers don't want to see costs of products. | ||
| The North American Building Trades Union, Sheet Metal Workers, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Foreign Policy for America, the National Taxpayers Union, tariffs are a tax, and Advancing American Freedom, the think tank that was established by former Vice President Michael Pence, all have weighed in to support SJ Res 37. | ||
| Tariffs are a tax. | ||
| Tariffs will hurt our families. | ||
| Canada is not an enemy. | ||
| Let's act together to fight fentanyl. | ||
| We can do that. | ||
| We have done that. | ||
| We showed it with the HALT Fentanyl Bill we passed two weeks ago. | ||
| But let's not label an ally as an enemy. | ||
| Let's not impose punishing costs on American families at a time they can't afford it. | ||
| Let's not hurt American small businesses. | ||
| Let's not make our national security investments in ships and subs more expensive. | ||
| I earnestly request that colleagues support SJ 37 when we vote on it later today. | ||
| and Mr. President, I yield the floor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A. | |
| Journalist and musician Lee Hawkins, author of I Am Nobody's Slave, talks about the impact that slavery and Jim Crow have had on his family through multiple generations. | ||
| Mr. Hawkins examines the relationship between the past violence experienced by family members, often at the hands of white people, and the way his parents raised and severely disciplined him. | ||
| All I knew growing up was that if I asked too many questions, if I said no to my parents, if I question any aspect of upbringing, and if I fell short of excellence, the price was going to be physical violence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Journalist, musician, and author Lee Hawkins. | |
| Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to Q&A wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. |