During remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke about President Trump's tariffs.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you. I rise today, following my colleague from Maine, to talk about Senate Joint Resolution 37,
00:07which we believe will come up for a vote later this afternoon, possibly somewhere between 6 and 7 o'clock.
00:14I am proud to have introduced this resolution a few weeks back, together with a group of bipartisan senators,
00:23many of whom will take the floor this afternoon to speak about it.
00:27Let me just first talk about the fact that this resolution is a little bit unusual in the terms of Senate procedure.
00:34There are not many things that a single senator can file and then be guaranteed a floor vote.
00:41In fact, there's only three or four such procedures.
00:45This resolution is filed pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act,
00:52which was the act used by President Trump to declare the Canadian emergency that is the subject of my resolution.
01:01The IEPA statute is an old statute. It's been around for quite a while.
01:07And I'll just state at the outset that IEPA, the act that the president has used to declare an emergency and impose tariffs,
01:17is an act that was designed to be used against adversaries.
01:21Congress wanted to give the president tools to deal with adversaries, nations that were enemies, cartels, rogue states, dictators.
01:32IEPA was not designed to be used against allies.
01:36IEPA says nothing about tariffs.
01:40It does not say that the president's actions against adversaries should include tariffs.
01:47The administration's use of this Emergency Powers Act to go against an ally is pretty unusual.
01:55It's not unprecedented. The president did it in the first term when he imposed IEPA tariffs against both Canada and the EU.
02:03But it is important to know that this is generally a statute that was designed to counter adversaries.
02:09And I stand here strong in the belief that Canada is not an adversary. They're an ally.
02:15Canada is not the 51st state. They're a sovereign nation.
02:19And Canada is not an emergency for the United States.
02:23Are there differences of opinion between the United States and Canada? Sure there are.
02:27It just so happens in the trade space, we have a state-of-the-art trade deal negotiated by President Trump and his team.
02:35The USMCA that was adopted by nearly a 90-10 vote in this body that gives us the ability,
02:42when we have differences with this friend and ally Canada, to work them out.
02:47And it's unfortunate in my view that we're using an act, instead of going to the USMCA,
02:53we're using an act designed to counter adversaries to impose these tariffs.
02:59I want to talk about tariffs.
03:02I want to talk about the president's rationale for imposing the tariffs.
03:07And then I want to talk about the importance of this resolution and the many stakeholders outside this body
03:14who are supporting Senate Joint Resolution 37.
03:18First on tariffs.
03:20President Trump's aides have basically admitted that this is a sales tax, a new sales tax.
03:27The tariff revenue will hit everyday people by making the cost of their goods go up.
03:32This is a CNN headline for a couple of days ago.
03:35Trump aide says tariffs will raise $6 trillion.
03:38That is a reference to Peter Navarro, which would be the largest tax hike in United States history.
03:45Now, to be fair, this is the total tariff effect, not just the Canada tariff effect.
03:50It is Canada and China and Mexico and potentially other nations.
03:54But what we are likely to see today with the tariff announcement,
03:58it will be the largest tax hike in United States history.
04:03Many have been writing about the challenges of tariffs and this tax hike.
04:09From CNBC, consumer confidence and where the economy is headed hits a 12-year low.
04:17This was an economy that was extremely strong just two months ago on President Trump's inauguration day.
04:24It was a very, very strong economy, not a perfect economy.
04:27But since that time, we've seen volatility in the stock market.
04:31We've seen growing inflation. We've seen reducing consumer confidence.
04:35We've seen some suggestions of slowing economic growth, even negative economic growth from some.
04:41And that is due in large part to the prospect of this national sales tax tariffs to the degree of $6 trillion,
04:50but also somewhat to the chaos about whether and when and how they will be implemented.
04:57Other economists have also written.
05:01A recent article in The Washington Post talks about the market's grim view of tariff shenanigans.
05:08Markets have plummeted since Trump announced new levies on Canada, Mexico and China,
05:13erasing nearly all gain since his election.
05:16The tariffs are still likely to be economically destructive.
05:20They will snarl global supply chains, raise costs to consumers
05:24and cause layoffs in industries that depend on imported inputs like steel.
05:29This means more than just additional pain for consumers whipsawed by inflation,
05:34higher prices on imports and now the possibility of a recession.
05:39Tariff shenanigans are shaking up the American economy,
05:43creating huge anxiety and already hurting consumers and businesses.
05:48A recent article in The Wall Street Journal called the Trump tariff effort the dumbest trade war in history.
05:57And The Wall Street Journal's point was a point that I made earlier that
06:01why use IEPA, a statute designed to go after enemies,
06:06when we have a trade deal that President Trump negotiated with Canada and Mexico.
06:10None of this is supposed to happen under the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement
06:15that Mr. Trump negotiated and signed in his first term.
06:19And again, I give the president huge credit for this.
06:22I believe the vote, I believe the USMCA vote in President Trump's first term got 89 votes in this chamber.
06:28That is hard on anything, much less a trade deal.
06:31What an accomplishment.
06:33But the USMCA created dispute resolution mechanisms that would make imposition of tariffs unnecessary.
06:40The US willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won't make other countries eager to do deals.
06:47Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions.
06:52But if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history.
07:05I've given you challenges in the global economy and in the American economy that are happening because of the trade war.
07:12Let me now get specific on Virginia.
07:14I heard my colleague from Maine talk about who is affected in Maine.
07:19In Virginia, I've been traveling around the state talking to Virginians and they're very, very worried about these Canadian tariffs.
07:24And they're not worried in the abstract.
07:26They saw them in 2017, 2018, 2019.
07:30So they know what happens with tariffs.
07:33It's an unusual group of businesses in that it is big, small, medium-sized, it's everybody.
07:42I have a bakery in Northern Virginia, Mom's Apple Pie, they have three locations.
07:47The owner, April, I see some nods, there are people who are Mom's Apple Pie fans.
07:52It's a great, small, business bakery.
07:55Their operations are Leesburg, Occoquan, and Purcellville.
08:00I was meeting recently with the owner and she said, you've got to do something about these Canadian tariffs.
08:05I said, April, now you have three small bakeries, now tell me how the Canadian tariffs hit you.
08:11And she said, pie tins.
08:13All of our aluminum pie tins come from Canada.
08:16If you raise the price of a pie tin by 25%, the price of a pie goes up by a good bit.
08:22Nobody has to buy apple pies.
08:24When the price goes up, a whole lot of people will decide they're not going to buy apple pies.
08:28This is a classic small business that are affected by Canadian tariffs.
08:33Let's go to the largest businesses.
08:36We are experts at ship and sub-building in Virginia.
08:39We manufacture the most sophisticated items that are made on the planet Earth.
08:44Nuclear carriers and nuclear subs.
08:4735% of the steel that goes into ships and subs made for our Navy, for our military, comes from Canada.
08:5665% of the aluminum steel comes from the U.S., but 35% come from Canada.
09:01We already, I serve with the presiding officer on the armed services,
09:06we already are having a hard time producing ships and subs on time, on budget.
09:12Take aluminum and steel and ratchet it up by 20%.
09:16It's going to get even harder to defend the nation and produce the ships and subs that we need.
09:22Like Senator Collins talking about her ag sector,
09:26ag and forestry is still the biggest industry in Virginia.
09:29People think of it as high tech.
09:31No, ag and forestry is still number one.
09:34And it is my farmers and foresters that are most concerned about the Canadian tariffs
09:41because they saw what happened last time.
09:43The first thing that happens, you put a tariff on Canadian exports, potash,
09:47the ingredient in agriculture fertilizer.
09:5080% of potash comes as an import into the United States.
09:54So that immediately goes up by 25% according to what the president has said he's going to do.
10:00That hurts farmers very, very badly.
10:03Second, there's never been a one-sided trade war in the history of the world.
10:07So when one party puts a tariff on, the other side retaliates.
10:12And in the first Trump administration, the retaliation was heavily against the ag sector.
10:18My soybean farmers that were exporting soybeans couldn't export to markets that they were previously able to.
10:24My apple farmers who export apples to Canada couldn't do it to the same degree.
10:31And their exports drop and their revenues drop, and this is already a low-margin business.
10:36My distillers and wineries and breweries, many of whom find an important part of their revenue
10:45might be 10% or 15% or 25% in export markets, to the EU, to Canada, to Mexico,
10:52suddenly find that retaliatory tariffs price their products out of business.
10:57I was with Dave Cupertino, who is the founder of Reservoir Distillery in Richmond, yesterday,
11:04and he talked about the fact that even before these tariffs have gone into effect,
11:08because President Trump announced them but then delayed them,
11:12there's an anger in the Canadian consumer.
11:15We don't want to buy American products if you're going to treat us this way.
11:18And he's been told by his distributors in the Alberta province
11:22there will be no American product put on any more shelves
11:26because we're so furious at the way we are being treated in this.
11:32Big businesses, small businesses, Volvo Trucks,
11:36one of the largest manufacturers in Appalachian, Virginia, in Dublin, Virginia,
11:40they manufacture all of the Volvo over-the-road trucks that you see anywhere in North America.
11:46They export significantly, significantly, to Canada and Mexico.
11:52They also import source materials from Canada and Mexico.
11:56The tariffs will increase the cost of their inputs,
12:00driving the price of their trucks up, making those trucks less competitive.
12:04We have a lot of businesses in Virginia that have operations on both sides of the border.
12:08BWXT in Lynchburg, which is the nation's premier producer of nuclear reactors
12:15for ships and subs, as well as nuclear reactors for other possibilities,
12:20they have operations in Canada.
12:22And they ship product back and forth across the line
12:25in ways where the tariffs will make it more expensive.
12:29And so the Virginia effect, and let's be clear,
12:34there's another one the senator talked about, tourism.
12:37We rely on tourism in Virginia.
12:39We're a top ten tourism state.
12:42And we have a lot of Canadian tourists.
12:44Canadians are among the most frequent visitors to Virginia Beach,
12:48our pristine, wonderful beachfront community.
12:51Canada tourism is strong.
12:53Canadian tourism to the United States,
12:56air reservations from Canadians coming to the United States are down by 75 percent
13:01because of a feeling that they're not being treated fairly.
13:05And they're looking at the United States, an ally, and they're saying, why us?
13:10And so the effect on the economy, big picture, stock market, inflation,
13:18at the kitchen table, the cost of groceries, building supplies come from Canada,
13:23a lot of lumber, housing's already too expensive.
13:27A tariff on lumber coming in from Canada is just going to drive up the cost
13:32of any home renovation project or new home construction.
13:36The tariffs on Canadian automobiles,
13:38a lot of the U.S.-plated automobiles are made,
13:41or at least products are significantly made in Canada.
13:44Those prices will go up.
13:45So from the kitchen table of a family to our nation's largest shipbuilders,
13:51these tariff shenanigans pose us huge economic risk.
13:55I go back to a point that was raised in the Wall Street Journal article.
13:59Why not use the USMCA?
14:02Why not use the USMCA?
14:04President Trump negotiated it.
14:06It was a success.
14:08It was something that succeeded in a bipartisan way.
14:11There have been discussions about whether after five or six years,
14:15the USMCA should be renegotiated.
14:18I think that's fine.
14:19We renegotiated NAFTA.
14:20President Trump made it better.
14:22If five or six years of operating under USMCA has taught us ways it can be made better,
14:27that's fine, too.
14:29But when you establish a treaty with an ally that includes a dispute resolution mechanism,
14:35why not use that mechanism instead of reaching for a statute that was designed to punish an adversary
14:42and putting massive sales taxes on goods that will make it harder for Americans to economically thrive?
14:51And so that does raise the question, if the USMCA was available,
14:56if there are differences of opinion on trade,
14:58why is the president imposing tariffs and using an emergency declaration rather than using the MCA?
15:06And I want to get to that next.
15:08The president has said there's one reason he's doing this.
15:12There's one reason for the emergency,
15:15for labeling Canada through this use of emergency power and adversary,
15:20and the reason is fentanyl.
15:23Fentanyl.
15:25No one in this chamber and no one here now or in any of the 100 senators
15:31would dispute that fentanyl is a massive problem and indeed an emergency.
15:36The opioid overdose deaths in my state, Alabama, all states, heartbreaking.
15:42The stories of families who lost their loved ones, heartbreaking.
15:46I was with a Roanoker earlier this morning, an ESPN reporter who was a gymnast
15:52and now works at ESPN, Lauren Keller.
15:56Lauren's from Roanoke, Virginia.
15:58She was in her freshman year at Rutgers when she got the call that her mother at age 45 had died.
16:04Her dad called her.
16:05She went to the airport.
16:06She flew home.
16:07By the time she landed in Roanoke, her dad had died as well,
16:10both overdosed on OxyContin, opioid-based pain medications.
16:17So is fentanyl a problem?
16:19Yes.
16:20Is it an emergency?
16:21Yes.
16:22Is substance use disorder generally an emergency?
16:27Yes.
16:28Of course it is.
16:29That's why we passed, Mr. President, the halt fentanyl bill just about two weeks ago in this chamber.
16:34Big bipartisan vote.
16:35That's why we're putting budgetary resources into interdiction technology.
16:40That's why Senator Ernst and I got a provision in the defense bill two years ago
16:44to require more cooperation between the U.S. and Mexican military on fentanyl interdiction.
16:51It is an emergency.
16:53But fentanyl is not a Canadian emergency.
16:57And calling it a Canadian emergency and putting the same tariffs on Canadian products
17:03as we put on Mexican and Canadian products is an invented emergency, not a real emergency.
17:10And guess what?
17:11The Trump administration agrees with me on this.
17:14Even though the president has declared a Canadian fentanyl emergency,
17:18there's a biblical statement, I think, about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
17:23One of the president's key intelligence advisors, Tulsi Gabbard,
17:26appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week,
17:29and she presented to the Intel Committee an annual assessment required of her office.
17:36It's called the Annual Threat Assessment.
17:38Looking at every threat that the U.S. is under globally.
17:41Who is threatening us militarily?
17:43Who's threatening us with fentanyl?
17:46Who's threatening us with cyber attacks?
17:48Who's threatening us with misinformation?
17:51And as she presented the report to the committee,
17:55one of my colleagues, Senator Heinrich of New Mexico,
17:57looked through the report and noticed that Canada wasn't in the report.
18:01Canada was not even mentioned as a threat in the Trump administration's first Annual Threat Assessment.
18:09There was even a section in the report specifically about fentanyl.
18:14Canada wasn't mentioned.
18:17And so my colleague asked the DNI,
18:21I don't see Canada mentioned.
18:22Canada's not mentioned as a threat.
18:24Not even as a threat in fentanyl.
18:26And her testimony to the committee was,
18:29You're right.
18:30The fentanyl threat is a China and Mexico threat.
18:34It's not a Canada threat.
18:36So is there a fentanyl emergency?
18:38Yes, there is.
18:40Should action be taken to stop it?
18:42Yes, there should.
18:44Might that action even include looking at tariffs against China
18:48for sending precursor chemicals into the United States or New Mexico to be manufactured into fentanyl?
18:54Fair question.
18:55I haven't challenged the China tariffs.
18:58Should Mexico be subject to some tough action,
19:01possibly including tariffs because of their role in allowing so much fentanyl to come into the United States?
19:07Very fair question.
19:08That's why I haven't challenged the Mexico tariffs.
19:12But even the Trump administration,
19:14in their presentation to the Intel Committee,
19:17said that Canada was not a fentanyl threat.
19:19This is an article from the Globe and Mail,
19:21which is the largest daily newspaper in Canada,
19:24published in Toronto from last week.
19:26In the aftermath of Tulsi Gabbard's testimony,
19:30Canada not mentioned in U.S. threat assessment summary a fentanyl crisis.
19:41There is a fentanyl emergency, but it's not Canada.
19:44So let's dig into this a little bit further.
19:48In 2024, let me tell you how much fentanyl was seized at the southern border of the United States.
19:55It's slightly over 21,000 pounds of fentanyl.
20:00Devastating. Devastating.
20:02How about fentanyl seized coming from Canada into the United States?
20:07Half of that?
20:09A quarter of that?
20:12A tenth of it?
20:16About one-two-thousandth of it.
20:19The estimates have been,
20:21although there's a new report that's just coming out as I'm speaking on the floor from the Globe and Mail
20:26that are saying even these estimates are high,
20:2821,000 pounds from Mexico,
20:3243 pounds from Canada,
20:35in the entire year of 2024.
20:38The Toronto Globe and Mail is doing an assessment of the 43 pounds,
20:43and here's what they found.
20:44That 43 pounds is an overstatement.
20:47The 43 pounds includes fentanyl interdicted in some northern cities like Spokane, Washington.
20:53And those were put on the Canadian interdiction stat,
20:57even though when we've dug into it,
20:59what we've discovered is,
21:01even though Spokane's pretty far north,
21:04that fentanyl didn't come in from Canada, it came in from Mexico.
21:07And all the people that were arrested
21:09as the fentanyl was interdicted in these northern cities
21:12were connected to Mexican cartels.
21:16And so this gives some scale,
21:1921,000 to 43 pounds,
21:22and the 43 pounds is dramatically overestimated.
21:25We think this actual number may be down in a very, very few pounds.
21:30It's not an emergency from Canada.
21:32And it's certainly not an emergency that would justify treating Canadian products
21:37with exactly the same tariff that we would levy on products from Mexico and from China.
21:45Mr. President, I think that allies are really important.
21:50And I think it's wrong to call an ally an adversary.
21:54Here's an article that appeared in the AP a little bit ago
21:58that I just want to read into the record.
22:01A beloved library that united the U.S. and Canada
22:04faces new border restrictions
22:07because of the president's emergency declaration.
22:11This appeared in the Associated Press on March 26th, just last week.
22:15And let me just read this into the record.
22:18For Alison Howell, her hometown library is more than just a place to borrow a book.
22:23It's also a unique space where different cultures from the U.S. and Canada
22:27have mingled and developed ties for more than a century.
22:31Howell and others fear that could change under a new regulation
22:35implemented by President Donald Trump's administration
22:38as tensions continue to rise between the two countries.
22:42The Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the line
22:46between Howell's village of Derby Line, Vermont, and the town of Stansted, Quebec.
22:53The entrance to the imposing brick-style and stone buildings on the U.S. side.
22:58But an informal agreement between the two countries
23:01has allowed Canadians to enter the library without a passport.
23:05Canadians cross the border on a sidewalk leading directly to the library
23:09that is monitored by the U.S. CBP.
23:12The nearest border checkpoint is not within eyesight of the building.
23:16Inside the library, there's a line on the floor marking the international border,
23:20and residents of both countries have been able to move freely among the stands.
23:24But since Tuesday, the only Canadian visitors able to enter on the U.S. side
23:31have been cardholders and library staff.
23:34All others have had to use an emergency exit on the Canadian side.
23:39Starting October 1, all Canadians will have to enter from their side of the border
23:43or pass through a security checkpoint on the U.S. side.
23:46It's a big change from the honor system arrangement
23:49that two countries have always used, users of the library said.
23:53This feels like one more step building a chasm between these nations, said Howell,
23:59who described the library as really special and a real symbol of international cooperation.
24:04Derby Line is a village of 700 people within the town of Derby,
24:07located in the rural northeast kingdom section of Vermont.
24:11Stansted is a town of about 3,000 residents.
24:15Like many rural border communities in the U.S. and Canada,
24:18their economies and cultures are linked,
24:20but the ties have become strained under President Trump,
24:23who has advanced tariffs and tightened border protections
24:26in some communities that rely upon one another.
24:31Why do this? Why do this?
24:35Like President Trump, I think it's right to say America first.
24:40But I don't want America alone.
24:42I don't want an America pushing aside its longstanding allies who have stood with us.
24:48Canada stood with us at 9-11.
24:50Canada has stood side by side with U.S. troops in every war we have been in.
24:56They have fought with our troops. They've bled with our troops.
24:59They've died with our troops in every war since the War of 1812.
25:03And yet we're going to treat them like an enemy,
25:05and we're going to make them come through an emergency exit into a library.
25:09This calls up to mind memories that I have of a South when I was born
25:14where certain kind of people couldn't go in the same door as other kind of people.
25:19This is no way to treat an ally. This is no way to treat a friend.
25:24Mr. President, as I conclude, I see other colleagues here ready to speak.
25:29I'm happy to say that the Senate Joint Resolution 37
25:33has picked up the support of a whole lot of people
25:36that I think are pretty important people outside this chamber.
25:39This morning, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce weighed in in support of SJRES 37.
25:47I'm going to read from the letter that they have sent to senators.
25:51The tariffs being imposed on imports from Canada and Mexico,
25:54America's top two trading partners,
25:56are inflicting real harm on American workers, companies, and farmers.
26:01Tariffs are taxes paid by Americans,
26:03and they will quickly increase prices at a time when many are struggling with the cost of living.
26:09These import taxes are also harming U.S. manufacturers
26:13and drawing retaliatory duties, worsening their impact on the economy.
26:18Further, these tariffs are at odds with the commitments the United States made
26:22in the landmark USMCA, which was negotiated by the first Trump administration.
26:28The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports SJRES 37,
26:33and they join a number of other organizations.
26:36The AFL-CIO.
26:38That's threading a needle, Mr. President,
26:40when I get the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the same page
26:45on a matter of such importance.
26:48The United Steelworkers.
26:50The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
26:53The International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
26:57The National Retail Federation.
26:59Retailers don't want to see costs of products increase.
27:03The North American Building Trades Union.
27:05Sheet Metal Workers.
27:07The U.S. Conference of Mayors.
27:09Foreign Policy for America.
27:11The National Taxpayers Union.
27:14Tariffs are a tax.
27:16And Advancing American Freedom, the think tank that was established by former Vice President Michael Pence.
27:21All have weighed in to support SJRES 37.
27:26Tariffs are a tax.
27:28Tariffs will hurt our families.
27:30Canada is not an enemy.
27:32Let's act together to fight fentanyl.
27:34We can do that. We have done that.
27:36We showed it with the Halt Fentanyl Bill we passed two weeks ago.
27:39But let's not label an ally as an enemy.
27:44Let's not impose punishing costs on American families at a time they can't afford it.
27:48Let's not hurt American small businesses.
27:52Let's not make our national security investments in ships and subs more expensive.
27:57I earnestly request that colleagues support SJRES 37 when we vote on it later today.
28:03Mr. President, I yield the floor.