US Senate passes Republican-led bill to rescind Trump’s tariffs on Brazil

The US Senate on Tuesday approved a measure that would terminate Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on Brazilian imports, including coffee, beef and other products, in a rare bipartisan show of opposition to the president’s trade war.

The legislation passed in a 52-48 vote, with five Republicans – senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and the former Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky – joining all Democrats in favor. The vote took place on day 28 of the federal government shutdown with both sides at loggerheads over spending legislation.

The resolution, led by Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat of Virginia, would overturn the national emergency that Trump has declared to justify the levies, though it is all but certain to stall in the US House, where the Republican-controlled chamber acted to pre-emptively shut down any attempt to block the president’s tariffs. In the unlikely event the measure were to reach the president’s desk, it would meet Trump’s veto.

“Tariffs are a tax on American consumers. Tariffs are a tax on American businesses. And they are a tax that is imposed by a single person: Donald J Trump,” Kaine said in a floor speech.

While Congressional Republicans have largely declined to rein in the president, Tuesday’s vote revealed an underlying discontent with Trump’s tariffs.

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

Paul, the sole Republican co-sponsor of the legislation, told reporters on Capitol Hill: “Emergencies are like war, famine, tornado. Not liking someone’s tariffs is not an emergency, it’s an abuse of the emergency power and it is Congress abdicating their traditional role in taxes.”

Trump has imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil, tying them to what he has called a “witch-hunt” prosecution of his far-right ally, the former president, Jair Bolsonaro. In July, he declared a national emergency with respect to “recent policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Brazil” that he said amounts to an “unusual and extraordinary threat”. Bolsonaro was convicted in September and sentenced to 27 years in prison for attempting a military coup in 2022.

“This President has said that their prosecution of a disgraced former politician is a national emergency for the United States. How could that be?” Kaine said in advance of the vote, accusing Trump of attempting an “end-run” around Congress. “If this is a national emergency for the United States, any president of any party could say that anything is a national emergency for the United States.”

Kaine also noted that the US ran a trade surplus of nearly $7bn with Brazil last year.

Trump has argued that the US has been exploited by foreign countries for far too long and that aggressive protectionist policies will benefit US workers and consumers.

Most Senate Republicans are not yet willing to cross Trump, and on Tuesday vice-president JD Vance visited their weekly lunch to emphasize that the administration’s trade policy was “very successful”, according to senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.

Hawley pointed to Trump’s Asia tour, which has resulted in a flurry of trade deals, including an agreed upon framework that would de-escalate tariff tensions between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies. On Monday, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, spoke with Trump on the sidelines of a regional summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, with both leaders emerging optimistic that the two countries were on track to reach a trade deal.

“The president is overseas now,” Hawley said. “He’s pursuing trade deals. He’s getting good results. He’s bringing in a lot of revenue, and, you know, it’s been very successful.”

Related: US and China agree ‘framework’ for trade deal ahead of Xi-Trump meeting

“Don’t undermine his positions so he can get these trade deals and then a lot of these problems are resolved,” senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, said of Trump’s expected meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping this week.

The supreme court is set to consider a case challenging Trump’s authority to impose broad global tariffs, brought in through an emergency economic powers act. Lower courts have found that the president does not have the legal authority to enact the levies.

Some Republicans have said they are waiting for the justices’ decision before voting against the president. “I don’t see a need to do that right now,” senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican of North Dakota, told reporters. “There’s a case in front of the supreme court, we’ll see how that case plays out.”

The renewed push in the Senate comes on the heels of an April vote, when four Republicans sided with Democrats to back a measure that would have rolled back tariffs on Canada.

However, a subsequent attempt to block Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs fell short, with two supporters of the effort absent from the vote, which needed a simple majority to pass.