During remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) spoke about President Trump's tariffs on Canada.
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript
Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I recognize the Senator from Rhode Island.
00:03Mr. President, I'm here in support of Senator Kaine's effort to get this body to take a public view on President Trump's mad declaration that we have a border emergency with Canada happening right now.
00:28I can tell you that if I go home to Rhode Island and ask people what the emergency is in their lives, I wouldn't get one person who said, oh, we've got a real emergency with Canada.
00:44They're a huge threat.
00:47That whole Canada situation, boy, that's dangerous.
00:52This is nutty stuff.
00:55And it's dangerous stuff economically.
00:58Just in Rhode Island, Canada is our largest international trading partner.
01:0522% of Rhode Island's exports are to Canada.
01:11And we import from Canada as well.
01:13And when the tariffs get reciprocated by our Canadian friends after this ridiculous behavior by President Trump, then that's going to affect all Rhode Islanders.
01:25We buy a lot of energy, for instance, from Canada.
01:29And that's going to raise costs for Rhode Island families.
01:34It's a direct hit to people's pocketbooks.
01:36And as has been pointed out, this is just a shady way to hit Americans in the pocketbook to raise revenue so that this phony baloney budget resolution we're about to have to deal with can open up revenues that they can then use as a justification for lowering taxes for the billionaires and the big corporations who already pay way too much.
02:06Way too little in taxes.
02:09Some billionaires pay no income taxes at all.
02:13The corporate share of America's revenue has gone from about 30% of America's revenue down to single digits.
02:21That's just a huge sucking sound pulling out of America's revenue the revenue of corporate entities.
02:29And it's not the mom-and-pop flower store.
02:32It's the huge multinational that goes and pretends that it's doing its business in Ireland or the Cayman Islands or someplace and hides profits.
02:44This is a tax racket against the American people that is now being propped up and made worse by a tariff racket against the American people.
02:55And the excuse is one of the dumbest ones ever.
02:59That the emergency is fentanyl.
03:02Well, Rhode Island was at the heart of the opioid epidemic.
03:06That's why I worked with Senator Portman to pass the CARA bill, the biggest addiction recovery response bill this body has ever passed.
03:17I take this issue deadly seriously.
03:20Not the President.
03:22Not the President.
03:23Not the President.
03:250.2% of the fentanyl in America comes across the enormous Canadian border.
03:32If you did it like per mile of the American border, it would be unmeasurably small.
03:39And over this fake excuse that there's a huge fentanyl problem, 0.2%, they're going to dump enormous new expenses on American families.
03:54People have called this a sales tax.
03:58And it kind of is.
04:00Because what it does is it raises prices.
04:02It raises prices because the money that the federal government takes in has to be recovered.
04:10And it gets recovered from families.
04:13From people who are paying higher prices for imported goods or higher prices for the domestic freeloaders who are going to raise their prices to match the imported goods.
04:24Just the way the fossil fuel industry raised their prices to match the foreign prices of fuel after the Ukraine invasion.
04:32And so gorged themselves that they made the biggest profits off the American people in the history of corporations.
04:41It was the biggest gouge ever by the scoundrels of the fossil fuel industry.
04:46And now we're opening the door for this to happen across all industries.
04:50American families are going to be hurt.
04:52And they're going to be hurt hard.
04:54And it just puts revenues on the books that the Republicans can then use to go and do what they really want to do here.
05:02Which is to make sure that all their billionaire cronies, everybody who's surrounding Trump, all the pals in the cabinet, all the ones who write the big checks to the super PACs and who fund Republican politicians, that they don't have to pay taxes anymore.
05:18It's Leona Helmsley Day here in the Senate.
05:20Taxes are just for the little people.
05:23This is a disgrace.
05:25And I hope there will be a few voices on the Republican side to recognize that considering the Canadian border to be an emergency is preposterous.
05:37I yield the floor.