Good work by Sen. Tim Kaine, even if it’s basically impossible this becomes law. Still, gotta make the case to the American people and keep pounding away at facts, evidence, etc.
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VIDEO: KAINE SPEAKS ON SENATE FLOOR IN ADVANCE OF VOTE ON HIS BIPARTISAN LEGISLATION TO END TRUMP’S GLOBAL TARIFFS
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke on the Senate floor ahead of the Senate’s expected vote later tonight on his bipartisan legislation to repeal President Trump’s across-the-board tariffs that the White House announced on April 2. These tariffs are a national sales tax – in total, Trump’s tariffs will cost the average American household nearly $5,000 per year. In the wake of President Trump’s trade wars, manufacturers have already laid off workers, foreign countries have imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural and manufactured goods, and the economy has contracted.
“The Constitution of the United States puts two powers clearly … within the hands of Congress: the power to tax and the power to conduct trade policy, including the imposition of tariffs,” said Kaine. “But President Trump finds Congress an inconvenience, and he has decided to take both of these powers onto his own shoulders by imposing a national sales tax.”
“President Trump on Inauguration Day inherited the strongest economy on the Planet Earth,” Kaine continued. “We know this morning, that strong economy, which was growing for three years at a very solid pace, is now contracting. It’s not only the contraction of the economy, it’s the chaos of the stock market. It’s declining consumer confidence. It’s projections of recession by Federal Reserve districts and major economists.”
“Last week, I traveled around the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Kaine said. “I talked to businesses everywhere in my state—and they talked about the layoffs, and they talked about the spending cuts, and they talked about the tariffs. And they added those three together and said what those three add up to is chaos—the chaos of unpredictability.”
Kaine continued, “A tariff is nothing more than a sales tax. It’s a sales tax on the products that everyday Americans use, especially groceries and clothing, building supplies. For farmers, the cost of fertilizer that they need as they’re engaging in spring planting … This is a sales tax on everyone in the country, but it’s a sales tax—as all sales tax do—that falls hardest on those who can least afford it.”
“A larger share of manufacturers are reporting declines in new orders … Some of those declines are driven because of the price effect of tariffs, the price effect of retaliatory tariffs, but some are also being driven by the uncertainty. There is a chaos penalty to the economy. When you’re not sure what’s going to happen, you slow your investments, and that’s why you see a decline in manufacturing,” Kaine said. “Businesses want to have predictability.”
“So how did we get here? From an economy on Inauguration Day that was the strongest in the world—when President Trump stood 50 yards from here and said it was a golden age—to an economy that has nothing but red lights and question marks all over it?” Kaine asked. “We got here because one individual decided to bypass Congress to take both the taxing power and the trade power into his own hands without a debate, without a committee hearing, without deliberation, without considering what people thought about the plan, and that one man and his decisions have taken a chainsaw to the American economy.
Kaine concluded, “We must turn this around, and the good news is the Senate has the ability to turn it around … All the economic trends are pointing the same direction. We should take a different path on the economy before it gets worse. The vote we will have later today gives the Senate—the greatest deliberative body in the world—the chance to stand up and say ‘Let’s take a different path.’”
Earlier this month, bipartisan legislation led by Kaine to reverse President Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods, which amount to a 25 percent tax on imports, passed the Senate.
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