The House is now going to have open season on President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Trump suffered a serious political blow Tuesday night when the House voted down a rule blocking members from offering resolutions to end the numerous tariffs the president has levied since returning to office.
GOP Reps. Don Bacon (Neb.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Kevin Kiley (Calif.) voted with all Democrats against the rule, despite heavy lobbying from Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership team and the White House’s legislative affairs operation. The White House was driving this process, mostly because Trump doesn’t want intraparty division. The GOP leadership knew it couldn’t win this vote, despite the pressure from administration officials.
With that vote, members will have effectively unfettered ability to force up or down votes on the president’s global trade agenda. This will start today.
Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) plans to offer a resolution terminating any tariffs imposed on Canada via a Trump executive order in February 2025.
These resolutions are privileged, meaning House GOP leaders must schedule a vote now that Johnson’s effort to block them has failed. Democrats need to wait 15 days from the introduction of such resolutions and forcing a floor vote. If the House approves any resolution, it gets a floor vote in the Senate due to its privileged status.
There are a few implications to consider here.
1) Trump’s loss was a loss for Johnson, too. The White House wanted Johnson to include the tariff provision in the rule. If you align yourself that closely with Trump and he loses a vote, so do you. Also, it’s never good for a speaker to lose votes.
“This is life with a small majority,” Johnson told reporters as he left the Capitol. “I need unanimity every day, and we didn’t get it tonight.”
2) This will reignite debate over Trump’s lame-duck status. Trump acknowledged Tuesday that there won’t be a second reconciliation package, quashing the hopes of House GOP leaders in particular.
“But we’ve gotten everything passed that we need for four years,” Trump told Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow.
If that’s really the case — and there’s a good chance that Democrats win control of at least one chamber in 2026 — how do Johnson and his top lieutenants keep members in line for the rest of this year?
3) Many House Republicans believe Trump’s tariffs are both bad policy and politics, and they’ll be tempted to vote with Democrats to disapprove of them.
4) Democrats have a flood of resolutions on the wide variety of tariffs Trump has issued. This could clog up the floor for House Republicans.
5) As the midterms get closer, Democrats will use these votes as a cudgel against vulnerable Republicans. Economists agree that the tariffs have caused prices to increase nationally, although there’s a debate on how much. There are questions as well about how much Trump can pressure industries to “re-shore” their manufacturing operations to the United States.
Yet forcing Republicans to vote on that is politically potent. There’s no doubt that Trump will be watching to see who bucks him.
Now what? This is a watershed moment for the 119th Congress.
A small group of House Republicans told Trump’s White House and the Republican leadership that they’d had enough of being asked to cover for a policy on which they disagree. GOP lawmakers have been mostly supplicants to Trump. This trio of rank-and-file no votes on Tuesday shows that some Republicans are ready to stand up against the president on a substantive policy disagreement.
There are some cautionary warnings for Democrats here. They can’t overdo the tariff push. Resolutions on Canada and Mexico are obvious targets. The countries are so closely entwined economically and politically with the United States for so long that Trump’s tariffs have caused an uproar in one of the world’s most successful trading blocs.
And remember that even if the Senate approves of any House-passed resolutions, Trump can still veto them. There’s clearly not enough GOP support to override Trump. However, this begs the question of why the president leaned so hard into this fight. Why spend so much political capital here?
The House GOP leadership could go back to the Rules Committee and try to enact this policy once again. But it’s difficult to see this internal fight becoming easier for Johnson’s leadership team as time goes on.
The House Republican leadership and the Trump administration’s legislative affairs staff argued all week that the GOP majority should give the president a reprieve until the Supreme Court rules on his authority to unilaterally set tariffs under emergency declarations. That argument rang hollow to Bacon, Kiley and Massie.
“I have to answer to Article I,” the retiring Bacon said, referring to the section of the Constitution which gives Congress the ability to levy tariffs.
In normal times, a president with a beleaguered House majority may be eager to allow moderate lawmakers to split with the White House for their own political benefit. But not Trump. He’s sure not to forget who was against him on this vote.
