Top Trump administration officials continue to say President Donald Trump has no plans to pull back from his unprecedented global trade war. That’s making it increasingly difficult for Capitol Hill to stay out of the fray.
After a bruising two-day period for financial markets following Trump’s “Liberation Day,” investors don’t expect this week to be much better. That’s not pretty, especially when stocks have already lost $6 trillion in value since Thursday morning.
The administration is about to run headlong into a wall of opposition from Capitol Hill.
A few things to consider:
1) Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have a bill to require Congressional approval of tariffs within 60 days. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) has a companion bill in the House.
Perhaps the slightly more independent Senate will move on this. But we can’t see this coming up in the House. At least not yet. And we would not expect the House to override a presidential veto if it came to that.
2) GOP moderates are already getting spooked. Expect the middle of the House Republican Conference and Senate Republican Conference to begin to express serious doubt about this trade war this week.
3) USTR Jamieson Greer is on the Hill this week for hearings. He’s going to get slammed.
4) The administration’s messaging here leaves a lot to be desired, according to Hill Republicans. Are they really trying to bring back manufacturing to the U.S.? Or are they simply trying to negotiate new trade deals with countries? It truly depends who you ask in the administration.
What they’re saying: The president’s advisers offered little comfort to the nation via cable television appearances this weekend.
– Peter Navarro, a key trade hawk inside the White House, joined Fox News on Sunday, promising a “broad-based recovery in the S&P 500,” and said that people should “just sit tight, let that market find its bottom.”
– Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS News that tariffs “are definitely going to stay in place for days and weeks.” Lutnick also declined to rule out further retaliatory tariffs. “The tariffs are coming. He announced it, and he wasn’t kidding,” Lutnick said. “The tariffs are coming. Of course they are.”
– Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed the odds of a recession on NBC’s Meet the Press. “The market consistently underestimates Donald Trump,” Bessent said.
Enter the Hill: Democrats will continue to hammer Republicans over Trump’s trade policies. The longer the market’s rout continues, the more ammo the opposition party will have.
Republicans, meanwhile, are beginning to become worried. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said on a House Republican Conference call on Sunday afternoon that the leadership needed to organize a conference call with top Trump administration officials on tariffs.
Speaker Mike Johnson said he would work to do so. But the speaker added that Republicans need to trust Trump because he created the world’s strongest economy once and is poised to do so again. Johnson also told Republicans to stay committed to the president’s agenda.
Here’s some news: Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee sent a letter last night to Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) demanding a hearing on the impact of Trump’s trade war.
The letter, signed by all eleven Democrats on the Banking committee and led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), told Scott the panel ought to examine the president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs.
