During remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) spoke about President Trump's tariff policies.
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00:00I fully support the resolution of Senator Kaine, and I want to make three points.
00:07Number one, should Congress continue to abdicate its constitutional responsibility,
00:15ceding it to the executive?
00:17Number two, I want to talk about the total fantasy, fantasy world,
00:23that the Trump economic agenda is grounded in, if you can use the word grounded.
00:29And then third, I want to talk about how these tariffs
00:33will be a dagger in the heart of the Vermont economy.
00:38First of all, the question for this institution is,
00:43will we, as the United States Senate,
00:47accept the responsibility that each and every one of us as senators has
00:53to stand up for the independent authority and responsibility of this institution?
01:00And as we know, our Constitution was based on the proposition
01:06of real suspicion of the accumulation of power in any one entity.
01:12And what was told to us in the Federalist Papers is what we know.
01:19If you have the concentration of power in any institution,
01:25that concentration of power leads inevitably to the abuse of power.
01:31And the design of our Constitution was to have equal and independent branches.
01:36And what I'm seeing is a lawless rampage on the part of the executive,
01:42being accommodated by an appeasing Congress,
01:46not standing up for its authority in many different areas,
01:51and then also an attack on the judiciary,
01:55as though the judges who disagree with an executive position should be impeached.
02:02But our authority over the budget
02:07is being advocated, as we saw in the CR.
02:12But another area of authority for the Congress is the tariff authority.
02:18And a couple of decades ago, this Congress gave and delegated
02:24some authority to the President in a national emergency to impose tariffs.
02:29That national emergency, that authority was given with the expectation,
02:34and rightly so in a mutually respectful civil society,
02:39that a President would use it for the intended purpose and with restraint,
02:43whether it was Republican or Democrat.
02:46And the national security had the connotation and implication
02:50of a military threat to our country,
02:52where there needed to be immediate executive action
02:55to protect the citizens of this country.
02:58What President Trump has done is run roughshod over that,
03:02showing no restraint and using that delegation of authority,
03:07not for a national emergency, but for whatever his latest policy idea is
03:12and whatever leverage he wants to extract.
03:15We cannot allow that to happen and maintain the separation of powers
03:19that is absolutely so fundamental to the long-term well-being of our country.
03:24So Senator Kaine is absolutely right.
03:26This is not a partisan question. It's an institutional question.
03:30Do we see our role, do we see our responsibility
03:36for maintaining that system of checks and balances?
03:39I do. That's the heart of this matter,
03:41and it is as important as even the outcome of what this tariff policy may be.
03:47Second, where does this tariff policy come from?
03:52It comes from the President, who is claiming that it will be a new golden age
03:56if we impose these tariffs.
03:58And by the way, these are astonishing tariffs.
04:01South Korea, 25 percent. Vietnam, 46 percent.
04:05Taiwan, 32 percent. Switzerland, 31 percent.
04:08Malaysia, 24 percent. Cambodia, 49 percent.
04:11Do we realistically think there will be no retaliation against America
04:17for these tariffs? We know there will be.
04:20Yet what the President seems to think, and this literally is a fantasy,
04:25that the golden age of America was when we had the tariff policy
04:30that he says caused the Great Depression,
04:33but where all economic historians say caused the Depression,
04:41he says that if we had had tariff policy then we wouldn't have had the Depression.
04:46There is literally no support for this.
04:50So the President has come up with this fiction,
04:53and what he's good at is sales.
04:56He says it over and over again.
04:58He cloaks it in an appealing objective.
05:02We want to have jobs back in America,
05:05and that is certainly something all of us share.
05:07But this fantasy that he has, and it is a fantasy,
05:11that high tariffs are going to, quote, make us rich
05:15and be paid for by other countries instead of our consumers.
05:19Just ask anybody who goes to Target or Walmart how that's going to work out for them.
05:23Ask anybody who's going to be wanting to build a house or buy a house
05:27where the prices are going to go up probably $25,000 in Vermont for a house.
05:32The third thing I want to talk about is very concretely in Vermont.
05:38This is devastating for us in Vermont.
05:43You know, our farmers get most of their fertilizer from Canada, 25% increase.
05:49And our farmers are on the margin.
05:52They are operating on such a thin margin
05:56that a 25% increase raises the existential question of whether they stay in business.
06:02Our maple sugar producers, they get their equipment largely from Canada,
06:0725% increase in the expense of buying an evaporator.
06:12Vermont consumers and businesses, we in Vermont along the northern border,
06:17I see my colleague from New Hampshire, same for you,
06:20we get so much of our home heating fuel,
06:24so much of our gasoline to power our cars,
06:28and so much of our electricity from Canada
06:32that at the end of that month, when you're juggling your checkbook
06:36and trying to make it balance, you're going to have a higher electricity bill.
06:41You're going to have a higher home heating bill.
06:44And every time you fill up, you're going to pay between 25 cents and 40 cents more a gallon
06:49because on northern Vermont, that's where our gasoline comes from.
06:55How is that going to serve anybody's interest?
06:58How is that going to help the people who are working hard every day
07:03to try to make ends meet?
07:06It is going to be devastating for them.
07:09And in addition to that, all of the uncertainty,
07:12you know, we have a responsibility to make through policy
07:18the lives of our folks in business,
07:21the lives of our farmers, the lives of our moms and dads,
07:25easier, not harder.
07:28In this uncertainty that is the hallmark of the Trump approach
07:33and these higher costs that are absolutely legislated
07:39as a result of his policy or by executive order,
07:43that's going to make life harder for all of the people that I represent in Vermont.
07:49You know, I want to, instead of just using my words,
07:53I want to use the words of a lot of Vermonters.
07:55When we got word, Mr. President, of these tariffs going into effect,
07:59we had a couple of roundtables up in northern Vermont, St. Albans and in Newport.
08:05And obviously, I wanted to hear from Vermonters.
08:08And here's how they say it.
08:10And by the way, this is not a partisan deal at all.
08:13This is somebody who's trying to run a business.
08:15It's somebody who's trying to pay their bills and their family.
08:18It's a construction company.
08:21But a vegetable farmer, Stoney Thompson.
08:26It feels like death by a thousand cuts.
08:30Vermont Food Bank, Jason Mehring.
08:32We get some of our vegetables from the Quebec side of the border.
08:36If the 25% tariff was applied in full,
08:39it'll be about $130,000 to $150,000 unbudgeted hit to our food procurement efforts.
08:46Catherine Derone, DeWage remarked,
08:50the ripple effects that this could have on energy markets,
08:53and of course, manufacturing, is very heavy.
08:57Matt Cook from PC Construction.
09:00I'm just concerned, in general, that it's going to further stagnate the ability
09:05for some of these much-needed construction projects to move forward.
09:10Dennis Borbo, Borbo Custom Homes.
09:14They build about three or four homes a year.
09:17Good business in northern Vermont.
09:20We would be strongly affected by the tariffs in terms of equipment costs for U.S. producers.
09:25I'm very concerned with the possible effects of this.
09:30Another, I can foresee the making homes unaffordable,
09:34which they already are.
09:36Just another vivid example of that.
09:39Some of the hardest-working people we have in Vermont are our loggers.
09:43They harvest logs, ship them up to Canada,
09:47and they will be paying a tariff when that log goes up to Canada.
09:53When it's milled and returned as lumber that can be used in home building,
09:59there will be a 25% tariff on that as that lumber returns.
10:03Who's going to pay for that?
10:05The home builder or the home buyer.
10:07That's what's going to happen.
10:09How in the world is this going to lead to the so-called golden age?
10:14The golden age is as much a fantasy as is the fantasy that tariffs were the visionary economic policy
10:24that will bring us to the promised land.
10:27These tariffs, number one, are the authority of Congress if we exercise our authority.
10:35They are not the authority of the executive.
10:38Congress should stand up for itself and assert its authority
10:43and protect the constitutional promise of separation of powers
10:47because we know that the concentration of power leads to the abuse of power.
10:53By the way, that's exactly what's happening right now.
10:57Secondly, let's not be deluded by a fantasy economic theory that is at the core of this.
11:04It just makes no sense.
11:07It has no credibility.
11:09It has no intellectual foundation.
11:12Who knows how President Trump came to believe in this so much that he asserts it.
11:19Third, if we look at what's the impact on the people we represent,
11:24the people who build homes, the people who farm our fields,
11:28the people who tap maple syrup,
11:31the people who run health clinics,
11:34the people who run food banks,
11:36and we ask them, hey, how is this going to affect you?
11:40Will it help? Will it hurt?
11:42Every single one of those people we represent who are doing the hard work day in and day out
11:48say, Peter, this is a disaster and we're going to vote for it?
11:54No way.
11:57Thank you, Senator Kaine.
11:59Mr. President, I yield.
12:01I recognize the senator from New Hampshire.