Republicans join Democrats in Senate vote to rescind Trump Canada tariffs

Several Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a resolution that would block Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, a rare rebuke of the president’s trade policy just hours after he announced plans for sweeping import taxes on some of the country’s largest trading partners.

In a 51-48 vote, four Republicans – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and both Kentucky senators, the former majority leader Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul – defied Trump’s pressure campaign and supported the measure. Democrats used a procedural maneuver to force a vote on the resolution, which would terminate the national emergency on fentanyl Trump is using to justify tariffs on Canada.

While Trump’s sweeping new tariffs, introduced in a White House Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday, did not include additional levies on Canada, the Senate vote amounted to a significant bipartisan condemnation of the president’s escalating global trade war with allies and enemies alike.

“Tariffs will hurt our families. Canada is not an enemy,” the Democratic senator Tim Kaine, the bill’s sponsor, said in a floor speech on Wednesday. “Let’s not label an ally as an enemy. Let’s not impose punishing costs on American families at a time they can’t afford it. Let’s not hurt American small businesses. Let’s not make our national security investments in ships and subs more expensive.”

Republicans have expressed varying degrees of unease over Trump’s clampdown on free trade – once a pillar of conservative orthodoxy – but few were willing to cross him, and many GOP leaders and supporters, including the House speaker Mike Johnson, were in the Rose Garden on Wednesday – a day dubbed “liberation day” by the president – as a way of championing the historic barrage of tariffs on goods from overseas he believes will boost American manufacturing.

Before the vote, Senate majority leader John Thune of South Dakota urged Republicans to oppose the resolution, arguing that the tariffs are needed to “ensure that President Trump has the tools to combat the flow of fentanyl from all directions”.

In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, sent just before 1am ET on Wednesday, Trump assailed the four GOP senators who had expressed opposition to his tariffs, imploring them to “get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl”.

He vowed not to sign the measure if it reached his desk.

Defending her vote, Collins said that the tariffs would hurt working families in her state of Maine, which shares a long border with Canada.

“The price hikes that will happen for Maine families, every time they go to the grocery store, they fill their gas tank, they fill their heating oil tank, if these tariffs go into effect, will be so harmful,” she said in a Wednesday floor speech. “And as price hikes always do, they will hurt those the most who can afford them the least.”

She also argued that fentanyl from Canada was not a major threat to the US, as Trump’s national emergency claims. “The fact is the vast majority of fentanyl in America comes from the southern border,” she said.

Democrats argued that Americans were turning against Trump’s agenda, pointing to a string of strong performances by their party in recent special elections that included a consequential victory in a Wisconsin state supreme court race on Tuesday night.

“The American people are seeing how bad Trump is,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech. “Tariffs is a good part of it. And they are not supporting people like Elon Musk and those who support Donald Trump.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Congressman Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House foreign affairs committee, said he would also force a similar vote in the House on the tariffs.

“Republicans can’t keep ducking this – it’s time they show whether they support the economic pain Trump is inflicting on their constituents,” he wrote on X.