News: A bipartisan group of senators filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court over the weekend in support of a lower court ruling that struck down President Donald Trump’s expansive global tariffs.
The brief comes ahead of oral arguments next month on the Trump administration’s effort to invalidate the appeals court’s ruling, which found that Trump abused emergency powers to impose the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
It also comes as the Senate is set to vote this week on three joint resolutions to overturn the national emergency declarations that Trump used to levy the global tariffs, in addition to the separate tariffs targeting Canada and Brazil.
Over the weekend, Trump escalated his trade war against Canada by cutting off trade talks and hiking tariffs by 10% in response to an anti-tariff ad that aired in Canada and invoked former President Ronald Reagan.
The brief. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) — the top Democrats on the Foreign Relations and Finance committees, respectively — led the group of 36 senators on the amicus brief. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has long opposed the tariffs, was the lone GOP co-signer. Additionally, 171 House Democrats have signed on.
The Democratic senators argue that the high court should deny the Trump administration’s request to stay the lower court decision, which relied in part on the fact that Congress hadn’t authorized the tariffs.
In the brief, the Democrats argued that IEEPA doesn’t delegate tariff authority to the executive branch, noting that Trump is the only president to ever invoke the law to impose tariffs. You can read the full brief here.
The votes. Senate Democrats, joined by a handful of GOP senators, are set to force votes this week on resolutions of disapproval for the three types of tariffs. These resolutions are privileged, meaning they can hit the floor without leadership buy-in.
The Senate passed the measure overturning Trump’s Canada tariffs back in April, with four Republicans joining all Democrats: Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Rand Paul (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Murkowski.
Later that month, Republicans successfully blocked passage of the resolution of disapproval for Trump’s global tariffs — but only because of absences.
Absent similar attendance issues, both of these are likely to pass this week, perhaps with additional GOP support. Some Republican senators who opposed the disapproval resolutions in April said they’d consider voting for them in the future if Trump hadn’t made significant progress on trade deals.
The Brazil measure is coming up for a vote for the first time. Over the summer, Trump declared a national emergency to impose these tariffs after Brazil’s government prosecuted Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, who happens to be a close Trump ally.
Trump did meet with current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Sunday.
It’s important to note that these Senate votes are little more than symbolic because House GOP leaders, in an unprecedented move, engineered a rules change that effectively bars floor votes on challenges to Trump’s tariff authority.
