Senate Rebukes Trump Again, Votes to End National Emergency Tariffs on Canada

The US Senate voted Wednesday (October 29) to terminate the national emergency President Donald Trump invoked to impose steep tariffs on Canadian imports, marking the chamber’s second bipartisan rebuke of Trump’s trade policies in as many days.

The resolution passed 50–46, with four Republicans—Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—joining Democrats in support.

The Senate’s move follows a similar vote on Tuesday (October 28) to block tariffs on Brazilian goods.

"President Trump has stretched this notion of emergency far beyond the language of the statute,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said in a floor speech ahead of the vote. “If President Trump can name anything as an emergency, so can any president henceforth.”

Kaine’s resolution targets the 25 percent tariffs Trump first imposed on Canadian goods in February under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Trump justified the move by claiming Canada was failing to stop the flow of fentanyl across the northern border, a rationale that Kaine and others called “absurd.”

“It is ridiculous to say that fentanyl is an emergency with respect to Canada,” Kaine said. “It’s a pretext that’s just being used to pour more and more tariffs onto Canada.”

According to US Customs and Border Protection, less than one percent of fentanyl seizures this year occurred along the northern border, amounting to only 66 pounds in total.

Trump later escalated the tariffs to 35 percent in August and threatened to raise them another 10 percent last week, following a spat over a televised advertisement by Ontario’s provincial government.

The ad featured a 1987 clip of former President Ronald Reagan warning that tariffs “lead to retaliation and shrinking markets”—a message Trump dismissed as “fake.”

The president abruptly canceled trade negotiations with Canadian officials over the ad, prompting sharp criticism from lawmakers in both parties.

“The economic harms of trade wars are not the exception to history, but the rule,” McConnell said in a statement explaining his vote. “Tariffs make both building and buying in America more expensive. And no cross-eyed reading of Reagan will reveal otherwise.”

Collins, whose home state borders Canada, said her vote reflected both economic and practical concerns.

“I’ve seen firsthand the damage that the Canadian tariffs have caused,” she said Tuesday. “The Canadians have worked very hard to try to stem the flow of drugs into this country, and the vast majority of drugs arrive from the southern border, not the northern border. So I don’t think the basis for imposing tariffs on Canada is a valid one.”

The trade rift has also spilled into the private sector, where Canadian exporters are scrambling to manage rising costs and tighter margins.

With tariffs adding pressure to cross-border transactions, many businesses have turned to their banks for foreign exchange, only to encounter delays and high fees.

“An estimated 85 percent of small and medium-sized businesses in Canada use their bank because of the convenience, and frankly, because they aren't aware of any other solution,” said Alfred Nader, CEO of fintech firm Mark Lane.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Giann Liguid, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.